Evaluation

Students will evaluate their project by asking how well the visual methodology worked. Where aspects of the plan were not easily implemented due to external circumstances or issues unforeseen at the planning stages, these will be explored and analysed. Reference should be made to the literature available in the reading list. (up to 1,000 words)

According to Prosser and Schwartz (2006) the appearance of naturally occurring objects, events and behaviours provide a gateway to the taken-for-granted, and reflects deeply embedded and therefore unquestioned aspects of culture which are critical to studies of society. The idea that something can become so deeply embedded it fails to be questioned or recognised is exactly what I wanted to demonstrate through my exploration of the influence of Christianity in the area.

At the earliest stages of planning, my intention was to photograph all of the churches in Inverness for the project. However, practical considerations aside, it became apparent there are many other ways to portray this influence. The principles of Grounded Theory as developed by Glasner & Straus (1967) refer to theory that is developed inductively from a corpus of data. Essentially according to the theorists, the grounded theory approach consists of a set of steps whose careful execution is thought to ‘guarantee’ a good theory as the outcome. Indeed according to Straus, the quality of a theory can be evaluated by the process by which a theory is constructed (Borgatti, 2007). With this in mind I attempted to take as many photographs as possible at the outset; to allow the theory to emerge from the data. Whilst a particular strength to this approach is that it allows implicit belief systems to become explicit, through an inductive rather than deductive process, as a social scientist I also found such an approach to be rather challenging due to my own academic experience. Nevertheless applying the principles of grounded theory essentially allowed me to experience a new way of exploring the social.

One particular limitation to my approach involved the organization of data. For example, writing oneself memos is an important part of the research process for grounded theorists. However, I often failed to type up such memos for my blog and instead left handwritten notes lying around precariously, which inevitably meant they would go missing. In addition, it would have been far more efficient to organize the coded data on to a spreadsheet however this was not done and instead, when looking for the final photos to include in my project, I simply organised them as I went.

Photographs have the uniquely iconic capacity to represent the particularities of a specific moment in time and space (Cronin, 2006). The photographs used in the final project aimed to demonstrate this in a variety of ways. Whilst the most obvious image is the church, the project also used images of such things as street names which can often be overlooked. In addition, Inverness has also used former churches for a variety of business ventures, including a bookshop and restaurant (both images captured in the final project). However in retrospect, whilst the project was able to demonstrate the subtle influences of Christianity, it may have been interesting to pursue the original aim and capture images of all the churches in Inverness. In addition, a greater emphasis on iconography within churches would perhaps have given greater nuance to the project aims.

Overall I feel the opportunity to explore image-based research was valuable and insightful. It not only allows one to move away from the more traditional methods of research but, in addition, using images to explore the meaning systems within any society can provide interpretations that are both rich and subtle in a way that perhaps words cannot. As an area of research however, it still only enjoys limited status due to the methodological concerns of orthodox word-orientated researchers. Indeed as Prosser (2006) suggests, social research has to a significant degree marginalized image-based research. This marginalization is further compounded by an academic community working within the qualitative paradigm who have devised a methodology which places emphasis on words, limiting the role played by images. As such image-based research is both undervalued and under applied by the orthodox qualitative research community. However the fact that it is resisted by orthodox researchers does not mean it is less worthy than more traditional forms of research, it simply means its potential has yet to be truly appreciated. As the philosopher of science, Karl Popper (1945), suggests existing knowledge about the world we live in has a provisional status rather than a permanent one. Indeed unless different approaches to the social are allowed to flourish, we risk losing critical and valuable insights into the world which they potentially offer.


Borgatti, S. (2007) Grounded Theory
[online] Available from:
< http://www.analytictech.com/mb870/introtoGT.htm >
Last accessed 20 May. 2008.

Cronin, O. (1998) ‘Psychology and Photographic Theory’, in J. Prosser (ed) Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers, RoutledgeFalmer: London, pp. 69-83.

Prosser, J. (1998) ‘Status of Image-based Research’, in J. Prosser (ed) Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers, RoutledgeFalmer: London, pp. 97-112.

Prosser, J. & Schwartz, D. (1998) ‘Photographs within the Sociological Research Process’, in J. Prosser (ed) Image-based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers, RoutledgeFalmer: London, pp. 115-130.