Photography as a Tool for Understanding Youth Connections to Their Neighborhood

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare photographic and questionnaire-based approaches to examining youths’ relationships with their communities. Thirty youth living in an urban neighborhood developed a collection of photographs depicting connections to their community. Youth also completed the Neighborhood Youth Inventory, the Collective Efficacy scale, and the Sense of Community Index, and were interviewed. A method of assigning ratings to the youths’ photographs that combined their own ratings with independent ratings by social scientists resulted in a measure that correlated significantly with questionnaire-based measures. This article discusses and illustrates the results through a case study, and identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each method as a tool for understanding neighborhood connections.