The enhanced participant-driven photo elicitation method for everyday life health information behaviour research

Published date18 November 2019
Date18 November 2019
Pages720-738
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-02-2019-0042
AuthorYuanyuan Feng
Subject MatterLibrary & information science
The enhanced participant-driven
photo elicitation method for
everyday life health information
behaviour research
Yuanyuan Feng
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper i s to report the design and im plementation of the enh anced
participant-drive n photo elicitation method in a qualitative int erview study, to assess the performance of
the method to investiga te a research topic in ever yday life health informa tion behaviour and to prov ide
insights on how to effecti vely use this method in future research.
Design/methodology/approach The author embedded the enhanced participant-driven photo elicitation in
a qualitative interview study to examine peoples everyday life health information behaviour with activity
tracking technology. The author assessed the types of visual data collected by the method, categories of elicitation
enabled by themethod and how the methodcontributed to key research findingsof the interview study.
Findings The enhanced participant-driven photo elicitation generated rich, unique and meaningful data
that would be otherwise difficult to collect through conventional qualitative interviews. The method also
elicited explanation, rationalisation and reflection during the interviews, which enriched and triangulated key
research findings. This work validated the benefits of the general photo elicitation method such as aiding
participantsrecall of experiences, enriching research findings and improving research validity. It also
demonstrated that the enhancement techniques used in this study could generate rich and even research data
across interviews.
Originality/value This paper describes the design and implementationof the enhanced participant-driven
photo elicitation method to augment a qualitative interview study with activity tracker users. The author
provides recommendations for researchers to take full advantage of the method in future everyday life health
information behaviour research.
Keywords Qualitative research, Information behaviour, Qualitative method, Photo elicitation,
Activity tracking technology, Health information behaviour, Visual method
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The emerging wearable and ubiquitous computing technologies enable people to have
access to new types of health information outside of traditional healthcare settings
(e.g. clinics, hospitals). For example, activity trackers record data about peoples daily
physical activities, wearable glucose monitors help people with diabetes control their
glucose levels, and various mobile health (mHealth) applications (Istepanian et al., 2007)
support patient-centred health communication and health education. These new types of
health information are often automatically being collected when people go about their
everyday life, making it easier for people to manage their personal health. The ways people
interact with and manage such health information fall into the research area of everyday life
health information behaviour.
As the investigation into peoples health information behaviour extends from
healthcare settings to everyday life settings, one challenge is to capture the full spectrum
of peoples health information behaviours, which are significantly impacted by their
increasing interactions with new types of health information brought by emerging
technologies in their daily lives. Conventional qualitative interviews and surveys, which
are widely used in information behaviour research, fall short in this area for the inherent
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 71 No. 6, 2019
pp. 720-738
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-02-2019-0042
Received 15 February 2019
Revised 12 June 2019
15 August 2019
18 August 2019
Accepted 22 August 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
720
AJIM
71,6
recall bias (Bradburn et al., 1987) owing to heavy reliance on participantsmemories
during interview or survey sessions. It is critical to explore methodological innovations to
address this challenge.
A promising approach is leveraging the power of visual methods to increase the rigour
and credibility of conventional qualitative methods (Cox and Benson, 2017). During the past
two decades, information behaviour researchers have adopted various visual methods in
their research studies, such as photo diary (Gabridge et al., 2008), graphic elicitation
(Copeland and Agosto, 2012) and information world mapping (Greyson et al., 2017). More
recently, systematic examination of visual methods in information behaviour research starts
to emerge (Cox and Benson, 2017; Hicks and Lloyd, 2018; Pollak, 2017). Drawings and
photographs are common visual media used in these methods. Drawing-based visual
methods are useful to elicit participantsperceptions of various networks, relationships and
practices related to information (Greyson et al., 2017). Photograph-based visual methods
help mitigate linguistic, temporal and spatial constraints during interview or survey
sessions (Hicks and Lloyd, 2018), which are particularly valuable to capture additional
data about peoples information behaviours in everyday life settings. However, such
photograph-based visual methods have not been comprehensively assessed within the
contexts of health information behaviour. Therefore, it is worthwhile to evaluate how these
methods could enhance everyday life health information behaviour research, for their
potential to capture a wider range of research data when people increasingly interact with
new types of health information generated by emerging technologies on a daily basis.
Photo elicitation is a photograph-based visual method that uses photographs or other
images to supplement qualitative interviewing (Harper, 2002). Participant-driven photo
elicitation is a subset of the method when these photographs or images are provided by
research participants (Carlsson, 2001; Carter and Mankoff, 2005), which is extensively used
in anthropology and sociology field studies to gather additional contextual information from
participants. However, the method has been adopted in a limited way by the information
behaviour research community, particularly in health-related settings. It is meaningful to
evaluate how this method could be used to examine research topics in health information
behaviour, as the first step towards a comprehensive assessment of photograph-based
visual methods in this research area.
This paper reports a qualitative interview study using a variation of the participant-driven
photo elicitation method to examine how people interact with and manage their personal
health information from their activity trackers (e.g. Fitbit, Apple Watch) and related health
applications. Note that the interview study is concisely outlined as an example of the
methodology. The motivation of the paper is threefold: to report the design and implementation
of an innovative variation of the participant-driven photo elicitation method in a qualitative
interview study, to assess the performance of the method when investigating a topic in
everydaylife health information behaviourand to provide insights into leveraging thismethod
in future research.
2. Everyday life health information behaviour: an example interview study
pertaining to activity tracking technology
Health information behaviour is a multidisciplinary research area. The health science
community has emphasised health behaviour and health education (Glanz et al., 2008),
building upon influential theoretical frameworks including health belief model (Rosenstock,
1974), the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1985) and transtheoretical models (Prochaska
and Velicer, 1997). Health informatics researchers have examined peoplehealth information
behaviour to support the design, development, and adoption of IT-based innovations in
healthcare services (The US National Library of Medicine, 2009). Information science
researchers often addressed the interplay between people and health information, where
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Participant-
driven photo
elicitation

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