Snap-Send-Share-Story: A Methodological Approach to Understanding Urban Residents’ Household Food Waste Group Stories in The Hague (Netherlands)

Abstract

Rich understandings of the phenomenon, urban household food waste (HFW), are critical to realizing the vision of sustainable, inclusive human settlement. In 2018/19, an exploratory study of HFW perceptions and practices of a diversity of urban residents, was conducted in the Bezuidenhout neighborhood, The Hague (Netherlands). Nineteen participants, communicating in one of three languages, as per their preference, participated through-out this visually enhanced study. The sequential “Snap-Send-Share-Story” qualitative, participatory action research (PAR) inspired methodology, employed in the study, is introduced in this paper. Focus groups (“Story”) which resourced and followed photovoice individual interviews (“Snap-Send-Share”) are principally emphasized. Three focus groups were conducted viz. Dutch (n = 7), English (n = 7) and Arabic (n = 5), within a narrative, photo elicitation style. Explicit and tacit, sensitive, private and seemingly evident yet hard to succinctly verbalize interpretations of HFW—shared and contested—were expressed through group stories. Participants accessed a stream of creativity, from photographing HFW in the privacy of their homes to co-constructing stories in the social research space of focus groups. Stories went beyond the content of the photographs to imagine zero HFW. This approach encouraged critical interaction, awareness of HFW, reflexive synthesis of meaning and deliberations regard social and ecological action.

Emotion mapping: Exploring creative methods to understand the psychology of long-term injury

“…Second, the method was appraised in relation to its effectiveness in unlocking new understandings of athlete lived experiences at the interface between image and oratory. Moreover, the emotion maps and transcripts were viewed by the researchers as integral and fundamentally interlinked with regards to the construction of meaning and important in evaluating the efficacy of the method (Trevenen-Jones et al, 2020).…”

“…These creative methods, borne out of traditional forms of therapy, have long been implemented to help patients process and overcome trauma in their life (Gabb, 2009; Perryman et al, 2019). Malchiodi (2003) explained that the emotive and visual nature of art-based therapy activates several senses simultaneously which aids the individual in conveying a far richer narrative (Trevenen-Jones et al, 2020). Within the world of applied psychology, this approach has been widely accepted, and indeed highly successful in a range of therapeutic contexts, and therefore is not subject to the same scepticism that art-based research garners as a method for scientific enquiry (Gabb, 2009).…”