Using visual and digital research methods with young children

Increasingly easy access to visual and digital technologies by both researchers as well as children and young people opens up continuing possibilities to create new methods for collecting, analysing and disseminating research data that relates to the lives of children and young people. Indeed OFCOM reports (2012; 2014) outline the wide range of digital media in the lives of children of all ages and thus indicate how they are accustomed to making meaning through such technologies. Findings such as these, and my own experiences of research, shows how incorporating visual and digital technologies in research with this age group can enable them to connect in ways that resonate well with children’s lives. As a result, in a book on visual research methods for working with children and young people that I edited with Eve Stirling, we wrote that, ‘innovation in visual methods…[needs to be] a key in driving forward visual research with children. By its very nature innovation requires processes of remixing, creativity and mess’ (Stirling et al., 2015: 1). In relation to this statement, this chapter will reflect specifically on a six-month study that looked at a group of young children’s interaction with and comprehension of images in their homes, public spaces and urban landscapes. The study is taken from a time when I was beginning to experiment with visual means and technologies in my research with young children. As a result it does not push boundaries for the possibilities of using visual and digital means for researching with children and young people to the extent that was attempted in Stirling and YamadaRice (2015). However, the study was chosen for inclusion in this volume for the way in which it demonstrates how innovation in using digital and visual methods to research with children and young people can be undertaken in very simple and manageable ways, thus providing a starting point for researchers new to using such methods, as well as providing a springboard for further experimentation by those with more experience.