Engaging Young Fathers in Research through Photo-Interviewing

Qualitative researchers aim to explore, understand, and conceptualize the experiences and perspectives of their participants, particularly participants' own interpretations of their thoughts, feelings, and actions (Richards & Morse, 2007). Interviewing is the most popular data collection strategy for this endeavor (Liamputtong, 2010). Denzin and Lincoln (1994), for instance, claim that interviewing is "the favorite methodological tool of the qualitative researcher" (p. 353). Two underlying assumptions of the interview as a data collection strategy are that participants are reasonably comfortable with a question and answer format and with expressing themselves verbally in such a format. Yet, our experiences and those of other researchers suggest that these assumptions are not equally valid across populations.Recently, we conducted a study with young fathers (ranging in age from 16 to 25) and were surprised when we encountered difficulties in both recruiting and interviewing them. The purpose of this paper is to describe our experiences interviewing young fathers using both conventional interviews, characterized by one-on-one, face-to-face interactions (Johnson, 2002) and photo-interviewing, characterized by using photographs as props during an interview (Hurworth, 2003). We do not argue that one data collection strategy is necessarily better than the other, but we theorize as to why photo-interviewing may make young fathers more comfortable participating in interviews. Overall, our aim in this paper is to encourage discussion of alternative data collection strategies to engage young fathers, and possibly other populations, in research.In this paper, we describe the challenges we encountered using conventional interviews with young fathers. We then describe photo-interviewing by positioning it within the context of other popular visual research methods. Lastly, we share our observations of the possible benefits of photo-interviewing for conducting research with young fathers.Our Experiences Interviewing Young FathersYoung fathers have often faced challenges that make sharing their experiences difficult and undesirable. They may come from unstable and low-income families (Devault et al., 2008), may lack the resources to financially provide for their children (Mollborn, 2007), and may experience social stigma and marginalization (Weber, 2012). These characteristics were true for the participants in our study.Understanding this, we created an environment that we thought would make it appealing for young, vulnerable fathers to speak with us. For example, we established a close relationship with the support agency that worked with the fathers; we let the fathers choose if they wanted their outreach workers present during the interview; we obtained consent orally; we asked questions in a conversational manner rather than using a formal interview guide; and we used a casual interviewing style, allowing participants to take the lead whenever possible. Even so, we had significantly more difficulty recruiting young fathers into this study than we did recruiting young mothers from the same agency for a similar kind of study. And, although the interviews went reasonably well (i.e., rapport was developed, participants were cooperative and tried to answer questions), the experience left a sense of dissatisfaction with the interviewer. Participants often appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable or anxious, they often fidgeted and physically faced away from the interviewer during the interview, they did not make or hold eye contact in a typical fashion often focusing their eyes on what appeared to be a random spot in the room, and their answers did not have the depth hoped for by the interviewer. Quite simply, the interviews did not flow as comfortably as similar interviews with young, vulnerable moms.Although the literature on the challenges of including men in social science research is scarce, some researchers have addressed men's unwillingness to participate in research, particularly in family research. …