Feasibility, Acceptability and Outcomes Associated with a Community-Based Photovoice Project with Homeless Youth

Background: Engaging homeless youth in services is difficult; service providers and researchers have therefore emphasized the use of novel methods to better empower and retain this population. Photovoice is an innovative form of participatory action research in which participants use photography to document their everyday lives, identify related challenges, and advocate for social change. Grounded in an empowerment philosophy, Photovoice participants build skills by learning visual methodologies and sharing their voices with decision-makers through collaborative group projects. This approach has demonstrated preliminary success with homeless and unstably housed adults, but has rarely been utilized with homeless youth. The current study examines the feasibility, acceptability, and outcomes associated with a manualized approach to engaging homeless youth in a Photovoice project.

Methods: This presentation summarizes the process and outcomes observed in the facilitation of two separate 10-week Photovoice projects with 20 homeless youth residing at a youth-serving shelter in Denver. Youth gathered weekly to identify social issues, share photographs that engaged these topics, develop recommendations, and plan a community exhibit advocating for social change. Data sources include field notes from 20 observations, 10 individual qualitative participant interviews, content analysis of 6 group dialogues about photographs, and pre/post quantitative self-report data.

Results: Photovoice appears to be feasible, acceptable, and potentially beneficial when implemented with homeless youth. Young people expressed substantial interest in participating in Photovoice. While 57% of youth who began the project completed, extraneous factors (transience, employment, housing situations, incarceration) interrupted participation for 43% of participants; such retention rates are still quite strong compared to high attrition common in traditional services. Based on observations, youth engaged most when they had agency in making decisions within the group, when they felt listened to by others, and when they found they had unique yet overlapping perspectives to share. At project end, youth qualitatively reported having gained empathy, connection, self value, perseverance, motivation, and increased identity as an agent of change, while quantitative analyses revealed statistically significant increases in social connectedness (t=-4.5,p<.01) and resilience (t=-2.3,p<.05). Findings suggest a Photovoice model of team-building, skills-training, data-gathering, recommendation-development, and advocacy-planning is responsive to the needs and interests of this population.

Conclusion: Photovoice appears to be a promising method by which service providers can engage homeless youth, help them to develop a sense of social connectedness, and empower them to create change. Photovoice may best be provided in short increments, as unstable living situations challenge most youths’ abilities to commit to lengthy projects. Adding a social network technology component (such as Facebook) may enable youth to stay connected and share/discuss photos over longer periods without frequent meetings, and should be explored further, as such online connections developed organically within the project. Potential self-reported benefits, such as increased empathy, self-efficacy and perseverance should be tested quantitatively with more objective measures and among larger samples, as such factors have been associated with buffering youth from serious social/emotional problems (e.g., substance use, suicidal ideation), of which homeless youth are at heightened risk.