Framing the Social World With Photo-Elicitation Interviews

This article discusses the photo-elicitation interview (PEI), a qualitative methodology, by addressing its fundamentals, providing examples of how to use it, and arguing its benefits and potential challenges. In PEIs, researchers introduce photographs into the interview context. The photographs used in PEIs can originate from the interviewee or the researcher. Researchers can use photographs as a tool to expand on questions and simultaneously, participants can use photographs to provide a unique way to communicate dimensions of their lives. Featured, in detail, are school ethnography and inner-city childhood studies that used PEIs.