The Art and Politics of Participant-Driven Photo-Elicitation With Muslim Immigrant Older Women

Recruitment and Sampling

Women were included in the study if they self-identified as Muslim, were 55 years of age or older, and were interested in sharing their experiences of social connectedness (Table 1). We defined older age as 50+ because women saw themselves as elders when they became grandparents and their views were influenced by lower life expectancies in countries of origin. One woman was younger than our inclusion criteria (54 years of age) but was a member of a participating seniors’ social group so she was included in study activities. Purposive sampling was used, followed by snowball sampling where older adults invited their peers to participate. Since data collection commenced during the pandemic, drawing on established social networks within Muslim communities was an essential strategy for recruitment. An Arabic-speaking and two Urdu-speaking community liaisons, both well-known community members who volunteered in local mosques, were hired to disseminate information about the study and recruit potential participants. Older adults from these communities are more likely to participate in research when they trust and know the members of the research team. Community members who were liaisons for the project supported building trust within these communities. Information was shared via social media, such as WhatsApp groups, and by word of mouth within existing social circles. A community advisory committee of eight Muslim women supported recruitment of participants, data collection, and analysis of visual and narrative data to maximize ethical and credible knowledge co-construction. The committee was formed in 2017 to support research with Muslim older adults. Membership was volunteer-based and was comprised at the time of this study of women from Pakistani, Indian, Arab, and Persian communities who were highly educated and who were older adults (n = 4) or caregivers/worked with older adults (n = 4).

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Table 1.

Participant Socio-Demographics.

Category	n = 41
Age	Less than 55 (n = 1)
	55–65 years (n = 22)
	66–70 years (n = 7)
	71–80 years (n = 9)
	Greater than 80 years (n = 1)
	Not recorded (n = 1)
Country of origin	India (n = 12)
	Pakistan (n = 12)
	Palestine (n = 6)
	Lebanon (n = 7)
	Kuwait (n = 1)
	Afghanistan (n = 1)
	Sierra Leon (n = 1)
	Fiji (n = 1)
Length of time in Canada	More than 10 years (n = 35)
	Less than 10 years (n = 6)
Education	Primary (n = 13)
	Secondary (n = 9)
	Post-secondary (n = 18)
	Not reported (n = 1)

Data Collection

The majority of data collection was conducted virtually between 2020 and 2022, using ZOOM or WhatsApp video calls, due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. An introductory meeting was organized to explain the study and build rapport with each research participant (Table 2). Photos were shared with the research team (a bilingual interviewer or an English-speaking interviewer with an interpreter) during the main interview which lasted for an average of 2–3 hr. Short breaks for prayer were offered during these sessions when they coincided with prayer times but otherwise sessions were uninterrupted. Follow-up short individual interviews were scheduled with five consenting participants as a form of member checking to discuss key ideas in their transcripts and elicit feedback on preliminary analysis. Over the course of the study, four women were interested in the study but were unable to share photographs due to tremors and vision issues that prevented uploading images (n = 2), low digital literacy (n = 1), and not having images to share (n = 1). We opted to interview these women without photographs because of their vulnerability to social disconnectedness in comparison to the majority of those who did share photos and, hence, the team wanted their experiences represented in the study.

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Table 2.

Photography Guide.

Photography guide

‘Women-CONNECT Study’ Please take photos of objects, people, spaces or places that are meaningful to your social connectedness. We request you select 10–20 photographs in total to share during the interview with the researchers. • You will be given 2 weeks to think about and take photographs. • You can share the photographs that you already have from your home country or after you came to Canada. • There have been previous studies that ask seniors to share photographs of their lives. See page 2 for examples of some of these photographs. • During the interview, we will ask you about your photographs. We will ask you to describe the photographs and what they mean to you. Please remember that: • This is not a photo contest. • It is not about skills, it is about participating and having fun taking photographs. • This is a way of expressing your experiences and emotions through photographs. • It may be useful to write your thoughts about each photograph. • There is no right or wrong photo, you are always right because this is your story! Some examples of the photographs that could be helpful are: (Examples of photographs were provided from other studies)

An interview guide (Table 3) developed from photovoice approaches (Wang & Burris, 1997) and the literature on social connectedness informed the interview process and included probing questions. As participants described the ways each photo represented their experiences of social connectedness, the interviewer followed up with questions to elicit further details that would expand understandings of the links between individual, meso and macro influences on social connectedness in older age.

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Table 3.

Interview Guide.

Interview guide
1. Describe your photograph? 2. What is happening in your photograph? 3. Why did you choose this photograph? 4. What does this photograph tell us about your social connections? 5. How can this photograph inform ways to improve social connections of older women who are Muslim and/or immigrants?
Photo Description	Experiences
Probing Questions: 1. Tell me about your journey coming to Canada? Why did you decide to migrate? 2. What was life like settling in Canada? 3. What were your social connections like when you first arrived? Did you feel connected or not and why? 4. How do you feel your social connections have been over the years living in Canada? 5. When was the time in your life that you felt most connected to others? least connected? 6. Did others in your family migrate? To where? Have you stayed connected with them over the years? Are you connected to them now? 7. If you need to talk to someone who do you go to? 8. Who do you feel best understands you? If you need help who do you go to? 9. Do you ever feel lonely? 10. How often do you volunteer? Participate in community events (mainstream, neighborhood, ethnic, religious communities)? 11. How often do you attend events at your local mosque? 12. Tell me about your social connections with others that do not live in your city? Who are they? How frequent is the contact? Purpose and benefits? 13. Do you feel connected to others at some times of the year more or less than others? Week? Day? 14. Are you satisfied with the general quality and quantity of social connections you have in your life now? 15. What would be the ideal level of socializing and social activities for you? 16. How would you describe your health? Are you satisfied with your health? Do you feel your health impacts your ability to socially connect with others? 17. What other factors in your life prevent you from connecting with others? 18. Is there anything else we should know about this topic that we have not yet asked about?

Data Analysis

All interviews were transcribed verbatim in English, Urdu or Arabic. All non-English transcripts were translated to English and validated by a member of the research team. The lead researcher was a bilingual Arabic speaker and the team included bilingual Urdu-speaking graduate students. A reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) was used to identify patterns of experiences across the data set that spoke to women’s social connectedness. Data analysis was a collective effort, involving co-construction within the research team, that included the lead author and six graduate and undergraduate students. Three students identify as belonging to the same religious, cultural and linguistic communities of research participants. Having an insider lens helped facilitate cross-cultural understandings during data analysis. The lead researcher has expertise in qualitative analysis methods, aging, and migration which facilitated the mentorship of students on this project. A number of peer-reviewed academic publications on study results are in progress. A website of the photographs and accompanying stories was created to disseminate study findings to non-academic audiences (See Figures 1 and 2 for sample website content). Study results were, also, communicated to non-academic audiences via a print and television national news story.OPEN IN VIEWER

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Figure 2.

Study findings.

Informed Consent

The risks of going public with a photograph can be high especially if it counters prevailing social or cultural norms (Sinding et al., 2008). Consent was obtained for each image, if it was to be shared with the public, and participants could choose which images were shared. Anonymity is of particular concern in local and close-knit immigrant communities where participants are easily identifiable through their stories and photographs. A balance is needed between safeguarding participants’ rights to privacy protection with their moral right to have their voices heard (Wiles et al., 2012). We used a three-level consent process for this study, drawing from best practices identified by other researchers (Ferlatte et al., 2022; Wang & Redwood-Jones, 2001; Wiles et al., 2012): (1) consent to share photographs with the interviewer during the interview or with the interviewer, (2) consent to provide copies of the photographs to the research team for data analysis, and (3) consent to use photographs for public dissemination. Verbal consent was obtained for a few virtual interviews that did not include photos because submitting a signed electronic consent form was difficult for participants.

Sharing photographs with the research team was initially seen as low risk to participants; however, two unique challenges were identified with some participants wearing the hijab (the Islamic head-covering) and with the close-knit nature of the immigrant communities. After the first few interviews, we realized that many photos were of participants and their family members who wore the hijab and these images could not be shown to men outside their immediate families. Only research assistants who identified as women were allowed to engage in data analysis of the complete data set that included these private photographs. These women put extensive trust in the primary researcher and the research team, many of whom were Muslim women who also wore the hijab. Future researchers who are not from Muslim communities or are from different genders than their Muslim research participants should address the issue of who has access to the full data set from the research team. One participant said “One request I do have is don’t share any picture without hijab… I asked (community liaison), and she said that nobody is going to see. I said okay” (Participant 28).

Ensuring the anonymity of a photograph can be difficult even when identifiable information is not readily apparent. It is important to note that since the advisory committee was involved in recruitment and snowball sampling was a useful approach, some participants were from the same social circles. In a meeting with the advisory committee, we shared some exemplar photos from our data set. One image was of an indoor plant in the corner of a home (Figure 5). Immediately a member of the committee stated: “I know whose house that is.”OPEN IN VIEWER

This incident reflects the real challenges of using photos in close-knit immigrant communities within a particular geographical region. While it is possible to change the details of a narrative exemplar, it is more difficult to alter a photograph without changing the experience that the photograph represents. As careful as the research team had been in informing participants that identifying photographs would be used only for analysis and not for knowledge dissemination, we could not predict whether a particular image of an object or place would be identifiable. This risk will need to be communicated to participants in the future for projects with close-knit immigrant communities.

Shared Meaning-Making

Interviewing using photographs to guide and provide reference points is described by Collier and Collier (1986) as ‘exploring the photographs together’ (p. 105) with participants, while other researchers have called this process ‘joint theorizing’ (Glaw et al., 2017, p. 7). Photo elicitation helped move from experiences related to photographs to more abstract discussions about social connectedness in older age. We labeled this shared process of meaning-making between the interviewer and the participant as proximal and distal meaning-making. Proximal meaning-making involves answering why they selected a particular photograph or what it could tell about their lives. Often participants then moved, with or without probing from the interviewer, to distal meaning-making. This involves expanding from immediate experiences and emotions related to the photograph to other threads of their aging experiences to weave a cohesive narrative. Distal meaning-making is similar to what Hodgetts et al. (2007) described as happening beyond what is captured in the frame of a photograph; capturing situations, events, and issues that are central to participants’ lifeworlds and are unrestrained by time and place.

Collier & Collier (1986) describe the analysis of photographs as a decoding process that moves from the visual to the verbal, articulating and building ‘systematic knowledge’ (p. 170). In interviews with participants, decoding, exploring and, joint theorizing resonated during the interviews. Participants explained the photographs, the meaning and intention of sharing the photographs, and then used these photographs as a jumping-off point to expand on core themes in their lives that related to social connectedness. This process maintained a participant-driven interview process and allowed the participant to reflect on the shared images and explore their experiences that were derived from this reflection.

Participant 1 [referring to Figure 6OPEN IN VIEWER

Visual methodologies can allow for non-verbal expression of experiences and emotions that can overcome language barriers; however, cross-language translation must still occur through interpreters during data collection and knowledge dissemination (Fitzpatrick et al., 2012; Lager et al., 2012). Moving from description to proximal and distal meaning-making was limited when interpreters were used. While interpreters function as cultural brokers, participants seemed to simplify their responses which were more concrete and descriptive versus analytical and reflective. This might have been because of the lack of spontaneity in the conversation when the flow was interrupted by the interpretation process or because the language barrier hindered rapport development between interviewer and participant to allow for shared meaning-making to occur. We strongly encourage photo elicitation to occur in the language participants are most fluent and comfortable speaking.

Politics of a Photograph

While empowerment has been explored in the context of photovoice (Bryanton et al., 2019; Ronzi et al., 2016; Seitz & Orsini, 2022), the ways that power dynamics impact photo elicitation should be further addressed within marginalized groups. Muslim women selected their photos which resulted in a two-fold research agenda: to answer the research question and to avoid re-stereotyping participants. The second objective became more apparent as data analysis progressed and the politics of knowledge dissemination surfaced. The ethical implications of disseminating images beyond the research team has raised concerns, including the risks of breaking trust with a community (Collier & Collier, 1986) or presenting communities in ways that do not reflect the stories they want to be told about themselves (Wang & Redwood-Jones, 2001). A visual image is fraught with socially constructed and politically implicated interpretations, with tangible consequences for those who produce, view, interpret, and share them (Rose, 2001; Wiles et al., 2012). We did not anticipate that the decision of which photos were to be used for public dissemination was a political act as much as a scientific exercise of rigor. Packard (2008) raises an important issue about power and knowledge where ‘knowledge is power only to the extent which it can be communicated’ (p. 73). We were not only asking which images represented the study themes on social connectedness, but also which images risked re-stereotyping Muslim women and which images could be misinterpreted.

One participant explicitly stated that there were rarely public images that reflected her experiences as a Muslim older woman wearing the niqab. While this participant wanted more images of women wearing the niqab to be included, the picture she shared did not capture the complexity and richness of her life, her love of her daughter, or her pursuit of education. The image was a faded photograph of a woman wearing a black niqab with a bare wall as a background. The image risked re-stereotyping the ‘Muslim woman’ within an already politically fraught Canadian landscape where policies such as Bill-62 continue to have negative impacts on women who wear the niqab (Mercier-Dalphond & Helly, 2021; Stonebanks, 2019). The power of older adults to create and share images that truly represent them can be limited as it was for this participant whose low digital literacy did not allow her to share images of social connectedness that reflected her current life. A look at the Instagram site of Amy Roko, the Saudi Arabian niqab-wearing influencer, or at episodes of We are Lady Parts, a British sitcom about a punk rock band of Muslim women, shows the diverse ways that the niqab can showcase the individuality and agency of its wearer. The images that participants chose to share, or not share, reflect as much of their understanding of what is acceptable, required, and possible to share in a particular interview encounter as they do about their actual life experiences (Hodgetts et al., 2007). Providing adequate support and tools to take photographs was limited due to the pandemic restrictions but would have been helpful in these instances where older adults did not have in their possession a large range of images to share that reflected the narratives they wanted to convey.

A second challenge related to consent but had critical implications for knowledge dissemination. Participants shared images of family and friends and other researchers have discussed the challenges of consent in these instances (Bryanton et al., 2019; Mysyuk & Huisman, 2020; Wiles et al., 2012). We could not obtain informed consent from everyone in the photographs, even when participants were willing to do so, because of pandemic restrictions that limited social interaction or because the individuals in the photographs had died or were living in other countries. These images were not used for public dissemination and were kept for data analysis only. Some participants struggled to find photos that did not include people and tried to obtain verbal consent from family and friends, while others did not want any identifying photographs made public.

Participant 2: You told me you guys going to delete the faces, right?

Family and friends were central to the women’s stories and were in the overwhelming majority of photos shared by participants to reflect their social connections. Removing these photographs from any public displays meant that a rich and colorful portrait of women’s lives was kept hidden. This became even more problematic as the research team reflected on the negative representation of Muslim women in public discourse (Hunt et al., 2020). The positive, joyful, and empowering group photos that the women shared challenged these stereotypes. Women shared images of colorful celebrations, friendly gatherings of women over food, women embracing family members, and women active with their daily hobbies. Another researcher working with an older LGBTQ+ community called for re-exploring consent in photovoice when participants choose photographs that were created for a time and place beyond the research study and cited concerns around representation (Chen, 2022). Hodgetts et al. (2007) discussed the concerns of participants living in homelessness around being stereotyped and misrepresented in popular imagery, while trying to counter these depictions in taken photographs. In hindsight, a more proactive approach to obtaining consent for these rich depictions of social life would have been beneficial such as working with the Ethics Review Board on ways to obtain consent from family and friends. Photo-anonymization is not always best practice as it includes loss of meaning, misinterpretation of the anonymized photo, and disempowerment of participants by taking away their right to be seen and heard (Allen, 2015; Glaw et al., 2017; Wiles et al., 2012). In working with older adults, we agree with Wiles et al. (2012) that the vulnerability of participants within a given time and place, the focus of the research study, and the ways that the data are presented to the public need to be considered together when deciding how to use non-anonymization.

We recognize the challenge of finding publicly available images that depict older Muslim women as they wish to be seen-vibrant, engaged in their communities, intelligent, and diverse; therefore, we scheduled a photoshoot for some of the study participants and their peers. The photoshoot was to celebrate the conclusion of the project and to create a range of photographs for knowledge mobilization activities that represent the vibrant lives of Muslim older women. The resulting images, once approved by the women, were used for knowledge mobilization activities such as on the study website, in conference presentations and in community reports. The photos included women praying, conversing with peers, and engaging in recreation activities. Consent was given by all participants of the photoshoot to use the images for knowledge mobilization. This helped meet the research objective of showcasing positive images of Muslim older women and countered the limitations experienced during the pandemic with the lack of ability to produce new photographs that reflected participants’ current lives.

Digital Opportunities with a Pandemic

Comfort with technology is a prerequisite for effective participation in visual methodologies and can be a barrier for older adults (Mysyuk & Huisman, 2020; Novek et al., 2012; Quinton et al., 2022; Ronzi et al., 2016). The physical distancing requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that we could not train less digitally literate participants on how to use required technologies. Additionally, physical disabilities, loss of eyesight, and reduced hearing can prevent participants from using the technologies required for participant-driven data collection (Hepburn, 2018). Similar to Ferlatte et al. (2022), who collected photovoice data with older adults during the pandemic, we used multiple strategies to make the project accessible, decrease the burden on participants, and alleviate technological anxiety. For those with a basic understanding of information and communication technologies (ICT) and who had access to digital devices, social media and videoconferencing tools were instrumental to overcome time and spatial limitations. We held an introductory meeting to increase comfort with technology use and used the messaging tool WhatsApp to share Zoom videoconferencing links and photos. Digital technologies offer an opportunity to connect within the comfort of one’s home while providing visual access into the home lives of participants (Chen, 2022). Conducting virtual interviews had the added benefit of enabling the participation of individuals who did not frequently venture outside due to limited access to transportation or adverse weather conditions. Two unique participant behaviors were identified in this study that highlighted the potential for ICT to democratize research even with older adults who often experience the brunt of the digital divide: (1) asynchronous photo sharing and (2) live video tours.

WhatsApp is one of the most common social media platforms used in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, making it a key transnational communication tool. Participants were comfortable with WhatsApp and used this platform to share images and communicate with the research team. In addition to sharing images outside the interview timeframe, participants used the interview space to show additional objects or photographs that they had at home when prompted by a probe from the interviewer. The following two examples of video tours show the spontaneous and informal nature of sharing that occurred during video exchanges.

Example 1:

Interpreter: She is saying that the “money plant” is between those two plants. So, we can’t see that. So, she actually went to bring it…[participant shows a house plant on video]. Again, going to bring something else. [participant shows a Jasmine bush].

Example 2:

Participant 23: I’m going to the backyard.

One participant brought an old DVD player to an in-person interview to show a video of her international volunteer work, while other participants sent videos via WhatsApp to supplement the photographs shared during the virtual interviews. While technology enhanced the quality of participation for many participants by offering flexibility and new ways of engaging in data collection, some significant barriers to participation remained for many older adults in the community. Manual dexterity and visual acuity are required to take a photograph, select photographs, and share them with others (Mysyuk & Huisman, 2020; Vigurs & Kara, 2017). Two older adults who were interested in the study during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic opted to only participate in interviews because of their vision loss and tremors that limited their ability to share photographs with the research team. Access to spaces and people that the participants wished to photograph is a prerequisite for effective participant-led photo elicitation which can be limited by mobility or other health barriers (Airth et al., 2022). Participants reported that the pandemic restricted their access to meaningful people and places, and shared old photographs by taking pictures of them with their smartphones and sending them via WhatsApp to the research team. Some refugees and newcomers reported that they did not have any photographs or a sufficient range of photos of particular people, places, or events that were meaningful in their lives, having left everything behind in their home countries. Asking about photographs not taken explores the aspects of loss, absence, and change (Hodgetts et al., 2007) and was an important element of this study with immigrant older adults where spatial (transnational lives) and temporal (aging-related losses and changes) disruptions often made an over-reliance on photographs potentially misleading. Most significant was the emotional distress that might result when the researcher is unaware of these losses during data collection. While we allowed some participants to engage in interviews without photographs, this study requirement could have heightened their sense of loss but we did not explore this during the interviews. With the purpose of valuing what the participant could offer, their stories, we intentionally did not ask about missing photographs during the interview after we were informed in the introductory meeting that the participant did not have access to them. One refugee woman from Afghanistan, who we interviewed without photos, shared her feelings.

Thank you so much for listening. She says now she feels a little bit better that she talked to you. She said there was never someone that she could sit and talk to, say how she was feeling in the time since she’s been in Canada. And she feels very happy for that, and she was saying thank you so much for that. (Translator)

Opening up visual methodologies to new ways of sensory knowing by using other visual artifacts can allow for wider participation and could be included in future studies to enhance equity and reduce the potential for psychological harm.