Photovoice in aged care: What do residents value?

Objectives This paper visually explores older aged care resident's day-to-day lived experience, as well as providing a brief introduction to the participatory documentary photography method of photovoice. Methods Ten residents from one Australian residential aged care facility collaborated with researchers and care staff to photograph, reflect on and share their lives. Photographs were shortlisted in individual and group discussions. Results Residents' photographs and narratives provide a visual understanding of what they value. Photographs captured three core themes: the restorative joy of nature (frangipanis); active engagement through leisure activities (football); and the value of social interactions and connections, especially with fellow residents and staff (friendship). Conclusions As old age and aged care remain virtually invisible within popular visual culture, this research highlights the communicative value of participatory photography for challenging stereotypes, as well as the opportunities, challenges and value of visual methods with this cohort

'I understand. I am a participant': Navigating the 'fuzzy' boundaries of visual methods in qualitative longitudinal research

In this chapter we discuss how utilising the participatory visual methodology, photovoice, in an aged care context with its unique communal setting raised several ‘fuzzy boundary’ ethical dilemmas. To illustrate these challenges, we draw on immersive field notes from an ongoing qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) exploring the lived experience of aged care from the perspective of older residents, and focus on interactions with one participant, 81 year old Cassie. We explore how the camera, which is integral to the photovoice method, altered the researcher/participant ethical dynamics by becoming a continual ‘connector’ to the researcher. The camera took on a distinct agency, acting as a non-threatening ‘portal’ that lengthened contact, provided informal opportunities to alter the relationship dynamics and enabled unplanned participant revelation

Innovative research methods in health social sciences : an introduction

Innovative, or creative research, methods have become increasingly popular in the last few decades. In this chapter, I will include several salient issues on which chapters in the section on “Innovative Research Methods in Health Social Sciences” can be situated. First, I discuss some ideas about innovative and creative methods. This is followed with the notion of those who practice innovative methods: the innovative researcher. I will then bring readers through a number of innovative and creative methods that researchers have adopted in their research. These include the theoretical lens, arts-based and visual research methods, the body and embodiment research, digital methods, and textual (plus visual) methods of inquiry. As an innovative researcher, our choice of innovative methods primarily depends on the questions we pose; the people who are involved; our moral, ethical, and methodological competence as researchers; and the sociocultural environment of the research. As we are living in the world that continue to change, it is likely that health and social science researchers will continue to experiment with their creative methods in order to ensure the success of their research. I anticipate that in the future, we will see even more creative methods that researchers will bring forth