Fiona Shirani: Multimodality in Qualitative Longitudinal Research

Multimodality in Qualitative Longitudinal Research

Fiona Shirani – New Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal Research. Cardiff. 8th February 2013.

Why multimodality in QLR?

▪ Sustaining participant engagement

▪ Extending temporal horizons

▪Dynamic – capturing changes/continuities through time

▪Making the invisible tangible

Issues to consider

▪ Participant or researcher generated?

▪Within or outside of the research encounter?

▪ Ethical obligations

▪ Analysis – of themselves or for talk generated?

Energy Biographies

▪ How do people use energy as part of their everyday life?

▪ How do people’s biographical experiences and aspirations influence their energy use?

▪ How can visual methods be used to explore views and experiences of energy use?

▪ 4 case site areas across the UK – 68 interviews/ 74 participants round 1, 36 participants rounds 2 and 3. 6 months between interviews.

Energy Biographies is led by Prof. Karen Henwood. Other research team members are Prof. Nick Pidgeon and Drs Catherine Butler, Karen Parkhill and Fiona Shirani

Between interviews 1 and 2

Activity 1 – participant-generated photos• Participants were asked to

take photographs of things they felt related to energy use in relation to four themes

• Two week period for each theme. Participants were sent texts to remind them of the theme

• Pictures then formed the basis for discussion in interview 2

‘I found it quite useful having the groups you know the focuses I think cos otherwise I would have yeah I think I’d have kind of tailed off’ Emmanuelle

Between interviews 2 and 3

▪ Activity 2 – text-prompted photos• Text messages sent to

participants at 10 intervals between August-November 2012 asking them to take a picture of what they were doing at the time

• From these pictures we created photo narratives, to be discussed with participants in interview 3

“No I enjoyed the fact of like stopping to think about what I’m doing because I think you know I spend my day just going through the day without actually thinking about what I’m doing so it was nice to stop and think, yeah, yeah I enjoyed it.” Sarah

During interview 3

▪ Activity 3 – video clips• During interview 3 participants are shown

clips from a 1950s and 2010s version of what a home of the future might look like

• The clips facilitate talk about the future, which can otherwise be difficult to discuss

“they were coming from a time of war and deprivation and they had in the beginning of the 20th century there was a lot of economic problems so all this is a part of the past and we’re looking into the future which is the opposite. So it’s abundance, it’s an easy life, not easy life in bad way but in a good way that you don’t have to do a lot of chores and you can enjoy your life more” Suzanna

“ if our population grows so much that the land shrinks that much that we really can’t produce enough food maybe we’ll have to look at something on the sea you know islands of growth or something like this without any soil or anything like that so could be a bit like out of the box that we might need in 50 years time to go back to” Dennis

Summary

▪ Participant-generated photos – participant-led discussion

▪ Text prompted photos – providing a point of comparison

▪ Videos – extending temporal horizons

www.energybiographies.org