Visual Elicitation Classic Grounded Theory

Either approach is defensible and each has different implications. Researcher-supplied images introduce the researcher's framing early; participant-generated images (photovoice, participant-produced drawings) give participants more definitional power over what is relevant. Classic GT's emphasis on following participants' concerns suggests that participant-generated or participant-selected images align better with its epistemological commitments, but researcher-supplied archival or contextual images are also used when participants lack the resources or inclination to produce their own.

Classic grounded theory in the Glaserian tradition holds that categories emerge from the data with minimal researcher imposition and aims for a single substantive theory explaining participants' main concern. Constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz) acknowledges that both researcher and participants co-construct meaning, and is more reflexive about the researcher's interpretive role. In practice, the analytic procedures differ: classic GT uses Glaserian coding families and avoids verification steps; constructivist GT uses a more openly interpretive coding language and foregrounds positionality.

This is a genuine methodological tension. Selecting or preparing images before fieldwork implies some pre-theoretical framing. The tension is managed — not eliminated — by keeping image choices as open and participant-relevant as possible, using images only as catalysts for participant-generated talk rather than as data to be interpreted by the researcher, and being transparent in the research report about how images were chosen and used.

Classic GT does not prescribe a sample size; theoretical saturation — the point at which additional sampling yields no new conceptual categories — is the criterion. In practice, studies often involve 15–30 participants, but this depends on the heterogeneity of the phenomenon and the richness of each interview. Adding visual elicitation typically produces longer, denser interviews, which may allow saturation to be reached with somewhat fewer participants than a purely verbal study would require.

In a visual elicitation classic GT design the images function primarily as interview prompts; the theory is built from what participants say and do in response. If you want to analyse the visual content of the images themselves — their composition, symbolism, or visual rhetoric — you would need to add a separate visual analysis component (e.g., semiotic analysis or photo analysis). Mixing these two analytic logics in a single study requires careful design and clear reporting of which claims are based on which type of data.