Using photo-elicitation with children and young people

This paper relates to research being undertaken as part of a Professional Doctorate in Social Work. The study title is ‘What is it like to be a sibling of a child with a disability? An exploration involving photo-elicitation’. One strand of this study involves the use of photoelicitation with children and young people aged 8 to 17 years of age. This methodology is not new having been used by Collier in 1957 but remains a lesser known system. Photo-elicitation has a number of advantages in research that would be advantageous in this current study. It is known to assist with balancing the power and allowing the interviewee to determine the nature of the material brought into the interview and also allows for deep interviews (Van Auken, Frisvoll, & Stewart, 2010). Within the field of Social Work there is an imperative that the views of children should be sought, and this is enshrined in
good practice and statute (Children Acts 1989/2004, Human Rights Act 1998, and the Convention for the Rights of the Child 1989). In practice, whilst there is a considerable amount of research into the needs of children with disabilities, there is less about the needs of their siblings, and some of this research was undertaken with the parents and/or professionals involved with families rather than the siblings themselves (Burton, 2010; Petalas, Hastings, Nash, Dowey, & Reilly, 2009; Taylor, Fuggle, & Charman, 2001). This paper considers the ethical and methodological issues of undertaking research with children with the aim of rebalancing these conflicts between the practice and research arenas.