SAIS/ Johns Hopkins: Video in Practical Research Methods

Professor Raul Roman, also Co-Founder of UBELONG, has invited me in to his class on Research Methods for a number of semesters to discuss the use of video in qualitative research and evaluation. Here’s a video we did from the very first time I came to class… lots of fun, and the students were fantastic.

Red Cross Tsunami Recovery: Identifying the Change

Quimera worked with the Tsunami Recovery Program to pilot an ethnographic video-based research method to help better understand program impact on beneficiaries and their communities in southern Thailand. Informed by participatory video the approach was intended to support evolving standards of beneficiary accountability, transparency, and stakeholder inclusion in program evaluation. A handheld camera was placed into the hands of beneficiaries in facilitated interview sessions, enabling beneficiaries to discuss and film various aspects of the program and its impacts on their lives.

Quimera and Red Cross were invited to present this video and a methods paper at the 2010 12th Annual Chicago Ethnography Conference as well as the 2013 American Evaluation Association Annual Conference. Quimera was invited to participate as part of an American Red Cross Panel, “Monitoring and Evaluation as Tools Towards Evidence-based Program Design” at the 2011 World Conference on Humanitarian Studies, Innovation Track. The video was also used as part of a presentation that Barese was invited to make at the 2012 International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET) sponsored by World Bank Independent Evaluation Group and Carleton University.