Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment

Data Collection

Traditionally, research takes an “etic” perspective of researchers observing participants, but VIA, based on the premise that those who experience are the experts on that experience, takes the “emic” perspective of research participants on themselves. Based predominantly in visual anthropology, the study of humans and their behavior through images of and/or created by the people being studied, VIA incorporates elements of participant observation, narrative and discourse analysis, and ethnography. Photography and motion pictures have long been used by outside observers to document people and their lives. Recent improvement, miniaturization, and simplification of imaging technology have created the opportunity to study human experience “from the inside out” by placing video cameras in the hands of research participants and asking them to show their own experiences. VIA participants produce raw, naive visual narratives of variable production quality but containing firsthand renderings of human experience, perceptions, and behaviors. Objective information about participants' experiences captured in the visual narratives is enriched by the subjective dimension of their firsthand perspectives.

Participants who meet inclusion criteria for a study give consent and are enrolled, followed by an introduction to the camcorder and study requirements. Informed consent for VIA is a two-stage process.

First, before taping, participants' consent only allows researchers to view the videos. Second, after completion, participants are provided with copies of their videos and asked whether they will release any or all of their visual narratives to the researchers for use in presentations, publications, and/or broadcasts.

To obtain audiovisual data that are the truest possible representation of participants' perspectives on their lives and living environments, researchers teach each participant only the mechanics of operating a camcorder—avoiding filmmaking techniques or conventions of visual style—so as to maintain the direct nature of their visual documentation. Provided with unlimited recording capacity, VIA participants are asked to “teach us about your experience” by carrying the camcorders and documenting their day-to-day lives for 4 to 8 weeks. Their primary mandate is to tell their life stories in their own ways, showing and telling the aspects that best reveal their experiences. Video was chosen because children and adolescents have been brought up with television and may have more ease and fluency in relating personal narratives, particularly sensitive material, in an audiovisual mode rather than a verbal or written mode. However, cultural expectations that photography is reserved for documentation of special events often need to be overcome because the material of interest is everyday behavior. To acquire documentation of common daily activities that can be compared across participants, researchers provide VIA participants with a list of standardized subjects of interest to augment their self-directed visual narratives. Researchers ask participants to record tours of their homes and neighborhoods, where they go and what they do from awakening until bedtime, their schools or jobs, their daily self-care, and their interactions with others. VIA participants interview family members and friends for their perspectives on the participants, their social worlds, and their interpersonal relationships. To reveal elements of their inner lives, participants are encouraged to speak directly to their camcorders each day as if they were writing in diaries, relating their experiences and responses, thoughts, and feelings about those events. When both the participants and the research team believe that the visual narratives are complete, the video equipment and all recordings are returned to the researchers.

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