Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hi, my name is Sarah Papperman. I work as a research coordinator and member of the evaluation team with Dr. Thistle Elias at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. Dr. Elias’ team partners with community-based and governmental organizations to evaluate community health programs. In this post I’ll share some tips based on our team’s recent Photovoice project.
Photovoice is an engaging research and evaluation method developed by Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris that puts data collection in the participants’ hands. Using Photovoice we ask participants to respond to evaluation questions by taking photos as initial answers, providing titles for their images and then describing the photographs’ meaning and importance for the evaluation team. Participants usually also have the opportunity to share and discuss images in groups with fellow participants. The resulting photographs and associated narrative provide a powerful medium not only for research and evaluation, but for community empowerment and advocacy as well.
As with any method, Photovoice can present challenges for evaluators, such as adapting to logistical needs of partners and participants. Our team has some Hot Tips for other evaluators considering Photovoice:
Our project participants were professional community health workers (CHWs) with very busy schedules so we offered multiple live training session options for participants. Sessions provided project orientation as well guidance for photo-taking. We recorded one session to enable asynchronous training if needed. Additionally, we offered two opportunities for photo sharing and discussion sessions.
To minimize time barriers, we offered our training sessions exclusively through a virtual platform. For the group photo discussion sessions, we initially intended for them to be in-person, but added a hybrid session to include a CHW who was unable to be physically present. The hybrid format wound up working well and ensured that all the CHWs could take part. If you offer a hybrid discussion session, we strongly recommend dedicating a single team member to manage technology and monitor the dial-in/video line to ensure active engagement for virtual participants.
Our team instructed participants to create titles for their photos ahead of time and email them to us when they emailed us their images. This way we would not need to dedicate discussion session time for creating titles.
In our first photo sharing and discussion session we had each participant present and then describe/discuss one photo at a time in a round robin style. The participants were so eager and engaged in discussion that we wound up having very little time to share and discuss the last few photos for each participant. In our second session we used the round robin format again, but instead had each participant present and describe three photos at once. This approach allowed ample time for participants to share all their photos during the session. As an additional tip, we recommend providing both physical printed copies of all images and digital images projected on a screen or wall. We found that the in-person participants appreciated being able to both physically hold the photos to look at them closely and being able to see the larger projected images.
To recap, we recommend structuring your Photovoice activity to offer multiple flexible and efficient ways for participants to be engaged. For example, you can offer hybrid sessions where participants share/discuss several photos at a time and both physical and digital copies of photos are available to participants. Photovoice can be an extremely engaging and rewarding evaluation method for evaluators and participants!
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