A bit about Maya’s work with participatory visual research methods
Page 1 - 2008 Jalaris Kids Future Club Evaluation Report
Following on from thoughts about the 1st International Visual Methods Conference, here are some reflections on participatory visual research methods I’ve been using. For several years I have been collaborating with Jalaris Aboriginal Corporation (based in Derby, Western Australia) doing collaborative research and evaluation of their community development programs – which focus on supporting Indigenous kids and their families in the Derby region. Our aim has been to produce research and program evaluation that communicates about community issues and project progress to both those who fund the work, and, perhaps more importantly, the Derby community, specifically the Aboriginal community. We’ve also sought to include participants in the program in collecting and analysing information – including them as participants in the research and evaluation as much as possible.
One of the main methods we’ve used has been photography – as even very little kids can take photos and like to look at them and talk about them. Back in 2004, when I was working for the Stronger Families Learning Exchange at the Australian Institute of Family Studies I wrote an article about using photography in action research, informed in part from my early work with Jalaris – which you can access by clicking here (it’s a little old now, but a friend tells me she still uses it in action research workshops sometimes, so maybe someone else will find it useful).
Jalaris and I are working on a 3-year evaluation of their Kids Future Club project – and we want to make all the research and evaluation material we produce really accessible to the kids and their families. So, even as we collect some stats and drier interviews, we’ve been doing a lot of work with photography and video, as well as experimenting with visual reporting formats.
Photography has become a staple data collection method – one of the best ways to keep a log of the range of activities and participants involved in the project. Where possible we have the kids take the photos themselves as we find it is less intrusive and more reflective of the actual nature of the project.
Page 9 - 2008 Jalaris Kids Future Club Evaluation Report
We’ve used video in a variety of ways. The kids have access to a little digi cam that can take MPEG4 videos, and they are encouraged to video activities at the club, including daily interactions. Every now and then we’ve set them a specific task – to video a guided tour of the kids club for example, or to video a specific activity that’s going on. This material helps us to see what the kids like to do, how they interact with the space and the activities, and to represent the experience of the Kids Club from the kid’s own points of view. Click here to see a recent video from a gardening activity at the club.
When I was conducting interviews for the 2008 evaluation, we wanted to include some interviews with the kids who attend the club, but knew that they wouldn’t say much if I conducted the interview myself. So we set some of the older kids (aged 9-12) up with a video camera, microphone and tripod, and worked with them on a few questions, and off they went and conducted interviews with kids at the club (ranging in age from 3 to 12 years). The interviews were done over several afternoons at the Kids Club – usually out of earshot of an adult, though they knew that the purpose was to give feedback to the Jalaris staff about the project. We then added this to the other data we had collected in the evaluation process, and also included segments in a DVD that accompanied the 2008 evaluation.
As a researcher on that project I found these video interviews really valuable – because they not only contained the answers to the interview questions (well usually!), but they also revealed a lot about how the kids interact with each other over a structured activity, including how they recruited each other to participate, how older kids and younger kids interact, how they translate from standard English to Aboriginal English for each other, and the range in confidence to state their personal opinion – much of this reflected in body language and facial expression.
Finally we have been experimenting with visual forms to present the findings of our research. The first annual evaluation report – released in early 2009 about the project in 2008 – was made using Comic Life software. (I love this software… click on the comic life tag on this blog for cool uses of comic life). We have tried to present things in a very visual way in the report – and at least managed to make a report that the kids have looked through – albeit trying to find photos of themselves! Click here to find a full copy of the report…
Page 27 - 2008 Jalaris Kids Future Club Evaluation Report
[...] tried to bring creative forms into social research and evaluation in small ways- such as using comic book layout to make an evaluation report, or creative writing processes as social research, but trust me, there are much more exciting and [...]