This document discusses qualitative tools for visual research. It defines visual data as including photographs, videos, objects, places, body language and more. Visual data can come from interviews, focus groups, CCTV footage, online videos, historic sculptures and more. The author discusses how visual data is multidimensional and must be analyzed within its spatial and historical context. Problems with visual research include over reliance on existing representations and failure to distinguish reality from means of representation.

1. Qualitative Tools for Research
Article Presentation
To
Dr. Riaz Hussain Soomro
By
Raj Kumar (15SMSMG25)
04-11-2015
SMIU

2. 
Giving Meaning to Pictures

3. 
 What do we understand from the words “ Visual Data” ?
 Photographic Images
 Videos
 What Else…..?
 It is this theme – that the ‘visual’ is the ‘realm’ of ‘data’, not
simply a domain amendable to ‘cultural’ or ‘interpretive’
modes of inquiry.
 And certainly it has a vast meaning than the word itself.
What is Visual Data

4. 

5. 
 Michael Emission on Visual Data:
 “In summary from the case I develop is to think of the
visual in terms of not only what the camera can record but
what the eye can see.”
 Visual Enquiry is no longer just the study of the image, but
rather the study of the seen and the observable.
 “Social Researchers should rethink both the empirical and
analytical possibilities which this domain accompanies.”
Introduction

6. 
 Data Types (Variety of few examples):
 Video data of interviews
 Focus group Visuals
 Interaction (playground situation),
 CCTV footage
 Ready available multi-media data (Soaps, news, advertisements, Online
materials e.g. You Tube videos,... )
 Archived films
 Private visual data (family movies – documentation analysis)
 Historic Sculptures
 https://www.surrey.ac.uk/sociology/research/researchcentres/caqdas/fi
les/CR%20-%20Visual%20Analysis%2030112012.pdf
Visual Data Types

7. 
 We will definitely see some of the very different
directions and aspects of Visual Data today, to which
the Michael Emission calls the, “Image Based Visual
Inquiry”.
 Examples includes: Newspaper cartoons or comic
strips can tell us about the wider political, economic
and gender systems in which they are embedded.
 Other forms are two-dimensional visual data such as
directional signs, diagrams and maps.
Visual Data in Visual Research

8. 
 Objects, places and locales carry meanings through
visual means just like images.
 Clothing and body language, are significant signs
which we use to establish identity and negotiate
public situations.
 Eye contact, Simmel’s ‘Mutual Glance’ – plays a role
in regulating the social life among strangers.
Visual Data in Visual Research

9. 
 The material ecology of the built environment,
shopping malls, museums and public spaces more
generally – has been argued to exert a determining
influence on the movement and mutual coordination
of the people.
 Tensions between surveillance, visibility and privacy
regulate our uses of such spaces.
 There is a rich material for visual researches in all
these areas.
Searching for Material for
Visual Research

10. 
 Here the focus is not so much on the role of the
commonsense reasoning by the academic analyst but
rather the ways in which ordinary actors use or
make sense of such visual information in the course
of their everyday practical routines.
The Focus

11. 
 Visual Researchers frequently allude to the popular
maximum that their photographs ‘speak for
themselves’. But it is not the photographs which
generate whatever sociological insight is claimed on
their behalf, but the viewer. That is, it is we who
make the images speak, not the photographs
themselves.
Does a Picture Speak for Itself?

12. 
 One key component here is our commonsense
understanding of the conventions of the textual
layout and what they signify.
 Moreover, we provide the additional narrative
material locatable in the images which servers to
reinforce, the interpretation of the viewer.
Does a Picture Speak for Itself?

13. 
 Sociology by Epitome, can be detected. (Schegloff, 1988)
 The photographs which provide the illustrative material
of the field’s, ethnographic essays, research reports, and
monographs serve a purpose only to the extent that we
can supply the theoretical or conceptual point they
purport to deliver.
 What if the order of the images is reversed? Would this
have led to confusion on the part of the viewer.
Does a Picture Speak for Itself?

14. 
 Photo-elicitation (Schwartz, 1989) helps researcher to
generate verbal commentary while interpreting the
existing photographs which might not be otherwise
possible through interview process.
 Auto-photography has also played a great role for
making researchers investigate the phenomena of
how one perceives on the basis of gender.
Does a Picture Speak for Itself?

15. 
 ‘The Visual’ and its all aspects are important.
 ‘The Visual’ itself has become not only a focus of
concern in its traditional homelands, anthropology,
sociology and cultural studies, but in architecture
and design, geography and urban studies, material
culture, new technology and multimedia, and
science and museum studies.
The Field of Visual Research:
Some Preliminary Considerations

16. 
 The visual material should be used critically and
reflexively, by the researcher.
 Some times finding rationale for including some images
in the research becomes difficult.
 Photographs should be considered for means of
preserving, storing, or representing information.
 Researchers should use code-sheets, the responses to
interview schedules, ethnographic field notes, tape
recordings or verbal interactions or any one of the
numerous ways in which the social researchers seek to
capture data for the subsequent analysis and
investigations.
Photographs as Data: Documentary
and Representational Considerations

17. 
 The dimensionality is a core organizing principle for
thinking about the different forms of visual information.
Underpinning this argument is the point that visual is
also spatial.
 The objects, people and events, which constitute the raw
materials for visual analysis, are not encountered in
isolation but rather in specific contexts.
 Spatial considerations opens up the new vistas allowing
more fruitful theoretical connections to be established.
Rethinking The Visual: Space,
Place and Dimensionality

18. 
 Stimson – General Medical Council (GMC) in UK.
 This is a room in which serious matters are discussed
in more disciplined manner.
The Hearing Room

19. 
 Maps
 Directional Signs
 Traffic Regulations
 Provide us with not simply information, but
information which is to be incorporated into
practical routines.
 Example – Signs in Medical Complex for Hospital
Staff for specific interpretation for actions needing
attention.
Two- Dimensional Visual Data

20. 
 Primary advantages of objects or artefacts for visual
enquiry offers greater range of possibilities than two-
dimensional data.
 Aesthetics
 Historical Significance
Three Dimensional Visual Data

21. 
 The possibilities in the use of three-dimensional data
it is a short step to the next ‘higher’ analytical level,
which is the places and settings, the actual
environments or lacales – in which humans conduct
their lives.
 Example – Museum planners and designers (e.g.
Dean, 1994)
Lived and Living Visual Data

22. 
 Viability of Visual Research as coherent intellectual endeavour.
 Confined attention of the researcher in his analysis to the pre-
existing cultural and representations
 Visual research stands as one of the most disorganized and
theoretically inchoate in the social science academy.
 Majority of the visual inquiry always remains questionable.
 Researchers some times fail to create difference between the
reality they investigate and the means of apprehending this
reality.
 Issues or representation in images generated by largely
anonymous or unknown photographers.
Problems

23. 
 Writers moves beyond a dubious illustrative use of
photography to make important theoretical points
about meaning and representation in their cultural
and historical manifestations which are only
available through visual means.
Problems

24. 
 Photographic images – in either their
representational or informational form – will no ,
doubt continue to figure in visual enquiry, but only
when researchers come to appreciate the value of
direct observation of the social world, harnessed
with a powerful theoretical imagination, will visual
research come to enjoy the centrality throughout the
social and cultural fields which it deserves.
Conclusion

25. 
Thank You