Asking participants to video things for themselves means that you can gain a unique perspective on your activities or site. You should get an idea of what participants see as significant or noteworthy.
|Research method||Preparation time||Time to gather data||Time to analyse data||Not suitable for ...||Does data indicate wellbeing?||Who, what, where people experience wellbeing?||Is it an activity in itself?|
|Participant video||None – unless you set tasks/parameters||10 – 30 mins||Can be long if there is a lot of recorded video to watch and analyse||People who haven’t given consent to photography/video. People who might find it difficult to use a video camera||It can do – but depends on what has been filmed||It can do – but depends on what has been filmed||Can be|
- groups that know each other well and where people are supportive of each other
- people who are self-conscious when in front of a camera
- people who can’t read or write
- people who don’t like to talk in front of a group
- people who can’t communicate verbally.
What information is collected?
- direct quotes from participants if they talk while filming
- participants can choose what they record/what is significant
- as participants set agenda this can be useful data in itself (e.g. analysing what they choose to film).
How is information collected?
- on video (or possibly audio) recorders
- you could set this as an activity in itself or some people may use the video whilst others are involved in another activity.
Watch out for:
- participants may film what they think leaders think is important/talk about
- people may follow conventions that they have seen on TV/film and try to emulate this in their films
- be careful of placing too much on the face-value of what has been recorded e.g. seeing significance in everything. You could write notes that say whether the person videoing seemed to be very focused or just waving the camera around
- you may need to go through some simple things about videoing e.g. try to hold the camera still, if panning move the camera slowly, saying who is speaking to whom (if interviewing). This will make things much easier at the analysis stage.