“I see it now”: Using photo elicitation to understand chronic illness self-management

Abstract

Background. How people integrate self-management into daily life remains underexamined, and such processes are difficult to elicit through traditional approaches used to understand human occupation. Purpose. This paper will provide a brief overview of one visual research method, photo elicitation, that holds promise for studying self-management of health behaviours and will present findings from an analysis of how the use of photo elicitation interviews contributed additional insights into self-management beyond those generated from the data collected through the other methods used in the study. Method. A qualitative, multiple-methods, multiple-case study was conducted with a purposive sample of 10 low-income women ages 40 to 64 with type 2 diabetes. Findings. The photo elicitation interviews contributed insights beyond those generated from other study methods about how individuals viewed their self-management behaviours and how occupations changed across time. Implications. Photo elicitation is a valuable research method for better understanding clients’ chronic illness self-management practices.