ABSTRACT
The photovoice technique, a participatory research method, allows participants to capture, reflect on, and share their lived experiences and perspectives through photography. Photovoice provides an avenue for inclusive and authentic data collection where participants are co-investigators. Despite its considerable usefulness in collecting rich data and enhancing contributions from the study participants, its consideration for realist-informed theorising is limited. This chapter introduces a realist photovoice technique as a potential tool in the toolbox of realist researchers and explores its potential contribution to enhancing programme theory co-elicitation between the researchers and stakeholders while addressing power inequities in researcher-participant engagements. Using images as metaphors and having study participants guide the conversations provides a unique strength of the realist photovoice technique for eliciting, testing, and confirming programme theories. The chapter also identifies the circumstances in which photovoice methods are appropriate or less likely to work well and provides practical applications and guiding principles for using photovoice in realist evaluation and possibly other realist-informed inquiries.
