Youth Photography as an Alternative Measure of Social Capital

July 8, 2008

The Park Hill Photovoice Project examined youth photography as an alternative measure of social capital.

Traditional measures generally rely on researcher-developed questionnaires that assess subjective perceptions of neighborhood qualities (e.g., sense of community), or counts of “objective” neighborhood features (e.g., number of liquor stores, percent homeowners). Our goal was to complement these approaches with a third approach in which community insiders, in this case urban youth, create a visual community portrait based on their lived experiences. Photographic narratives avoid several problems inherent in surveys. They do not use pre-determined response categories that might be insensitive to marginalized people’s worldviews, they do not require knowledge of formal or majority group language, and they allow people to shape their own messages and convey them in ways they deem meaningful.

For this project, 30 youth from 12 to 18 years of age (14 African American, 11 White, 3 Hispanic, 1 Asian American) attended four weekly workshops in which they thought about social capital in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver, learned photographic techniques, and completed existing questionnaires. Between workshops, youth photographed their neighborhoods and compiled the best of their work into community portraits, each consisting of 5 to 10 photos. Youth rated the scene depicted in each of their photos twice-how negative or positive it was, and how typical of Park Hill. Across seven months, the reliability of these scores was .44

A team of researchers derived nine coding categories from youth’s community portraits that corresponded to conceptions of social capital in the research literature and also captured the content of the photos. Photographs were coded and youth ratings were used to derive scores in each category. A principal component factor analysis identified one component on which all nine scores loaded. Two scores reflecting qualities of space loaded most highly (.85). The first was whether the space depicted was nurtured (e.g., tended garden), neglected (e.g., unkempt yard), or disrespected (e.g., graffiti on garage door). The second was whether the space was welcoming (e.g., an inviting path) versus excluding (e.g., snarling fenced dogs). Organized Activities, Formal Gathering Space, and Non-personal Relationships also loaded highly (>.6).

Next we examined correlations between photographic scores and scores on five established measures of social capital. In preliminary analyses we had assessed the intercorrelations of the 20 scales that comprise these five measures. Ten were significantly intercorrelated (average intercorrelation=.47) and were used to establish construct validity for the photographic scores. Five photographic scores correlated with the 10 criterion variables and they were the same five scores that loaded highly on the principal component of the factor analysis. Nurtured/Neglected/Disrespected Space emerged as the strongest score, correlating significantly with 9 of the 10 criterion variables, with an average correlation of .46 (comparable to the average intercorrelation among criterion variables). Organized Activities (e.g., street fairs, tennis lessons) correlated most consistently with objective counts of neighborhood features. Scores reflecting social relations and informal activities were not highly correlated with criterion variables.

Photographic narratives can effectively tap dimensions of social capital also tapped by existing measures. In addition, photography can yield new insights by representing the voices of marginalized groups. These representations can inform both measurement and intervention. In this project, youth’s community portraits also appeared in a community exhibition and were used as a springboard for youth-led discussions with community stakeholders. In the tradition of action research, we sought to strengthen youth social capital as we studied it.