Search results

Doing qualitative research with vulnerable urban populations such as street traders present significant methodological challenges, which many researchers may not be prepared to handle. This paper aims to provide a reflective account of the authors' fieldwork experiences while conducting a study with street traders in Harare, Zimbabwe.

This paper draws data from a qualitative case study conducted with street traders in Harare's Central Business District (CBD). In this study, mixed qualitative methods were used including focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and photovoice.

The study’s findings suggest that researching street traders is a complex process that requires flexibility, adaptability and creativity of researchers across the following aspects: gaining access in unfamiliar research contexts, building rapport and trust with participants, managing ethical dilemmas and addressing power imbalances between researchers and participants.

While there is a growing body of empirical research on street trading in the global south, there are limited studies that discusses the practical fieldwork experiences associated with conducting primary research with such vulnerable and dynamic urban populations. The authors highlight strategies and practical steps that can be taken to address these challenges. This paper emphasizes the need for flexibility and adaptability in researching street traders, as it is akin to exploring uncharted territories where conventional methodological templates may not be effective.

This paper aims to uncover characteristics of physical spaces that evoke feelings of welcome and belonging in a diverse student population in an academic library.

The photovoice method was used to allow research participants an active role in shaping research questions and collecting and analyzing data.

The research reveals that space design significantly influences students' feelings of physical safety, emotional well-being and safety and ownership (or sense of belonging) in academic library spaces, thereby emphasizing the importance of considering space design in promoting student well-being and inclusiveness.

This research used photovoice methodology to engage underrepresented student communities in providing input into the design of library spaces.

There is an increasing need for greater awareness and understanding of the risks climate change poses to farming communities so as to inform appropriate adaptive responses. The purpose of this study is to investigate farmers’ climate change impacts, awareness, risk perception and current adaptation strategies adopted to deal with the impacts of climate change on their livelihood.

This research was undertaken with 67 farmers in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. This study used a combination of focus group discussion and quantitative survey to obtain data. Surveyed farmers were invited to an initial workshop and asked to take photos of climate change impacts on their land and the adaptation strategies being adopted. The photos were analysed and discussed with the farmers in a second workshop. Then, in a third workshop, farmers and other stakeholders came together to rank the most important consequences of climate change and shared knowledge on adaptation strategies. The survey and photovoice data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

The results of this study showed that a majority of the farmers were knowledgeable of climate change, mostly got climate information through media. Floods and high temperatures were perceived as the most occurring climate change-related disaster risks. Majority of the farmers perceived climate change as high risk and have taken up multiple adaptation strategies in response to it, including changing planting times, mulching their land and digging irrigation pits. Farmers’ responses indicated that they want to do more but are restricted by financial resources.

This study outcomes provide evidence for a need to consider stakeholders’ participation in planning climate change responses to effectively address the challenges posed by climate change, particularly in coastal agricultural communities. Government and relevant agencies as recommended need to support farmers to undertake needed adaptive strategies to adapt with future flooding, high temperature and drought, providing them with necessary facilities to enhance their adaptive capacities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was one of the first studies to use photovoice to investigate climate change awareness, impacts and adaptations strategies with majority female farmers in west Africa. This study highlights the importance of participatory approaches to capture grassroots climate adaptation approaches.

Gratitude is an element of positive psychology that has been found effective in improving subjective well-being and decreasing aggression in offenders. However, there is a dearth of studies on gratitude in ex-juvenile offenders. This study aims to explore the gratitude of ex-juvenile offenders using a photovoice technique.

Photos and stories behind pictures were collected from eight ex-juvenile offenders who reside in Kupang, Indonesia.

Thematic analysis resulted in four main themes: family as an oasis of gratitude, difficulty in social reintegration, strong peer support and gratitude and spirituality.

The results of this study indicated that family, peer support and intensive spiritual activities in prisons were influential in forming a sense of gratitude for ex-juvenile offenders. Interventions need to consider these three aspects to improve gratitude and resulting well-being in ex-juvenile offenders.

A focus on how visual cultures in domestic spaces influence older migrants' identification with the homeland has been noted in previous research, ¹ yet migrant youth have not typically been the sole subjects of investigation in this regard. This chapter seeks to fill this gap by offering insight into the practices of young Indian women in domestic spaces and how these practices influence their sense of belonging to India. This chapter highlights the practices of young Indian women living in Brisbane, Australia, through an exploration into how the young women recreate their histories and cultural attachments in domestic spaces. The research presented in this chapter illustrates the processes of emotional attachment for young migrants and how these processes demonstrate new ways of practising diaspora, including the use of the internet to learn about their cultural histories. With the use of PhotoVoice, where photographs were retrieved from mobile phones and the internet, the participants discussed their everyday lives relating to their emotional attachments to material objects in domestic spaces and the connection to their identities. This chapter's main argument is to highlight the need for researchers to avoid the tendency to place young migrants into the same diasporic categories as their parents and to recognise the diverse ways in which young migrants actively shape their own cultural attachments.

Mental ill health is on the rise amongst undergraduate students and has been investigated using both positivist/quantitative and exploratory/qualitative research methods. However, the lived experiences of mature students who have mental ill health have not been directly investigated. A limited research literature suggests that challenges particular to mature undergraduate students can cause mental ill health or exacerbate existing needs. Further research exploring the lived experiences of mature undergraduate students with mental ill health is thus warranted.

A qualitative approach was adopted to explore lived experiences of mental ill health for mature students in higher education. The interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) explores the experience of higher education mature students who self-identify as having mental ill health. Five participants were interviewed about their personal stories and perceptions.

The study found that participants interpreted the experience of mental ill health as very difficult with no redeeming features reported. A lack of control over mental ill health experiences was contrasted with attempts to control mental ill health, whether successful or not, in order to progress with their learning. Participants conceptualised being mature undergraduate students as a last chance succeed in life, education or a career. This increased stress that interacted with their mental ill health symptoms.

IPA calls for a small, homogenised participant sample. This limits generalisation of the research findings. Recruitment criteria welcomed participants who self-identified as experiencing mental ill health, leading to potential bias in reported lived experiences.

The research findings highlight the value of considering the lived experience of students experiencing mental ill health whilst studying. Whilst general approaches to support can be successful, this research demonstrates how higher educational professionals must orient towards an ideographic perspective when considering how to provide individualised, inclusive support for students experiencing mental ill health. A discussion on how this can be actualised is provided.

The research provides impetus to the perspective that students have unique lived experiences of mental ill health, and that this is particularly so for mature undergraduate students. A key social implication of this is that, whilst positive based, one-size fits most, interventions for students experiencing mental ill health are useful, higher education educators must also be cognizant of unique, dynamic experiences each student will have. As such, there is a need to move towards a relational, dialogic approach when considering and designing tailored support.

Mature undergraduate students who experience mental ill health are at risk of not reaching their potential. Yet despite this, exploration of mature undergraduate student's experiences of mental ill health is nascent in the academic literature. Research considering their unique perspectives as an avenue to develop joint compassionate understandings and interactions between students and educators are additionally scant. The current study begins to address this dearth of exploration and commentary. It provides an idiosyncratic, novel inquiry into this important issue.

The study aims to investigate how pregnant and nursing mothers’ stories have been neglected in writing about gender, security and spaces.

The study chronicles Agogo Traditional Area’s pregnant and nursing mothers’ resistance and survival in this conflicted environment. The author used photo voices in a participatory photography design to give conflict-area women a voice. Interviews and observations supported this. Pregnant and nursing mothers were sampled using the purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The data analysis considered narrative analysis, photographic and inductive approaches.

The findings highlighted how these mothers in vicious settings experienced healthcare access and problems, societal issues including gender dynamics, food insecurity, and emotional and psychological well-being.

The findings in this study expand the socio-cultural narratives of pregnant and nursing mothers in violent spaces.

Significant advances have been made in using applied methodological approaches. These approaches facilitate critical and creative ways to generate new knowledge, encouraging researchers to explore novel research questions which could not be sufficiently addressed using traditional “branded” methodologies. It is important that, in addition to design, researchers consider the most appropriate methods to collect data. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the draw and tell method in the context of an interpretive descriptive study.

Given the challenges associated with eliciting responses from adolescent populations, in addition to the use of a semi-structured interview guide, the authors encouraged adolescent participants to produce drawings as part of an interpretive descriptive study.

Despite the fact that drawings are seldom used with adolescents during research interviews, the authors found this method promoted conversation and facilitated deep exploration into adolescents' perspectives.

The authors argue that this creative approach to data collection should be embraced by researchers engaging in applied methodological research, particularly with participants who may be challenging to engage. Drawings, although seldom used with adolescent research participants, can stimulate engagement and facilitate conversations.