Documenting through photovoice: Ethical dilemma of involving participants as research team

Abstract

Background: Participatory research in social work discipline has continuously involving clients in the knowledge building process, which aims at advocating clients’ empowerment and emancipation throughout the research process. This abstract is documenting and analysing the use of photovoice, a participatory research method, in a project of the author’s PhD study.

Ethical dilemma and way out: The main ethical dilemma involved in this project was the concern over taking photographs of other non-research participants. Both the research ethics committee and the research participants have raised their own concern.

First, the research ethics committee concerned about the informed consent of the nonresearch participants. Whereby the definition of photovoice, the research participants are the ‘master’ of the camera, they can take any picture of the place, people, objects, etc. which they may have been consider as the assets and challenges living in the community. In one way, as a participatory researcher, we would like to involve the participants and empower them in the research process; we also need to balance the rights of those being photo-shoot. Hence a session of educating photograph ethics to the research participants before allowing them to take the photos. It has been emphasised if the non-research participants being taken in the photos, he or she has the right to know the purpose of the research, the data usage, etc. The research participants are suggested to ask the person-concerned in advance and give them a prior-prepared research brief.

Second, the research participants felt embarrassed to documenting photos involving people purposely. This issue was raised after discussing the limited of photographs brought in the 2nd session. Although they have shared taking photos with mobile phone was very convenient nowadays, they found about documenting their assets and challenges to the livelihood as an adult living with eczema is a novel experience. They found it hard to locate their preferred objects or explain to the person which may involve. Then due to the tight schedule and commitments of the participants and researchers, it has suggested to change the means of documenting from participant-generated photographs to visual art forms and decontextualised photographs. The change of form of visual research may be deviated from the original research direction, yet the main purpose of involving research participants as much as possible (including the decision-making process) in participatory research still prevails.

Conclusion: Social work has long held the tradition of empowering people and the number of participatory researches has been grown flourishly in the recent years. This abstract has discussing the ethical dilemma and the way out in using the photovoice as a participatory research method. It is foreseeable that ethical dilemma would still occur, but it is the researchers’ wisdom to find a way out and empower the research participants without continually devalue them as ‘passive object’ in research.