Research Quality in Participatory Visual Research
- Publisher:
- SAGE Publications Limited
- Publication Type:
- Chapter
- Citation:
- The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Quality, 2025, pp. 262-277
- Issue Date:
- 2025-12-12
In Progress
| Filename | Description | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23955071_16384940220005671.pdf | Published version | 206.41 kB |
Copyright Clearance Process
- Recently Added
- In Progress
- Open Access
This item is being processed and is not currently available.
The field of qualitative research can be characterized as productively unruly. New ideas and their subsequent critique emerge on an ongoing basis, resulting in more theoretical directions, methodological innovations and shifting positions. Plurality reigns. Some changes stay and become new approaches. One of these is the ‘participatory turn'. The active involvement of participants – also called co-researchers – in the research process has not only lessened power imbalances between researchers and participants but, in fact, also reformulated these roles. Besides determining research foci and design, joint efforts in collecting and analysing data aim to establish egalitarian relationships. Visual images, both digital and non-digital, such as photographs, videos, maps, and drawings, have a long history of being produced and used by social scientists as qualitative research methods. The visual became intertwined with participatory approaches when researchers began to ask participants themselves to produce and interpret these visual data (Lorenz & Kolb, 2009). Considering the democratic ideologies undergirding participatory research, visual technologies aid participation by enabling participants to contribute and discuss visual data in ways that are inclusive of their own perceptions and life experiences.
However, there is nothing inherently participatory about the use of visual methods; instead, visual research is only participatory when conducted with attention to power dynamics and change (Fairey et al., 2022; Packard, 2008). In this chapter, we describe participatory visual methods as a subset of participatory research approaches, with the use of visual images in service to participatory research aims. Given the plurality of paradigms (and their varying strengths) within various research disciplines, social institutions, and broader society, we suggest that participatory (visual) researchers need to be paradigmatically literate and flexible, rather than paradigmatically rigid, in order to serve the participatory aims of engagement and change. This further means that the task of accounting for the quality of the research at various stages, to various audiences, requires reflexivity in relation to the multiple vantage points held by those involved (Collier & Wyer, 2016).
To substantiate our argument, we will discuss methods that encompass still images (photovoice) and moving images (video-reflexive ethnography). Case studies in both methods will provide a more detailed view on the intertwining of what counts as quality with the paradigmatic perspectives on processes of knowledge production. Taking this entanglement into consideration, this chapter does not aim to qualify specific considerations as the quality criteria for participatory visual research. Instead, we aim to provide the reader with a repertoire of reasonings that can help identify quality requirements beyond the examples we will use in this chapter to discuss quality in participatory visual research. Distilling its overall argumentation, the chapter's conclusion derives the following two participative visual research quality markers: engagement and movement.
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: