Using Digital Video Technology Supports the Researcher to Be a Play Participant in Children’s Play

Using digital video technology for collecting research data is becoming a popular qualitative method in social science research. This article explores how digital video technology could be an analytical tool for a researchers and how this tool supports the researcher to actively engage in children’s play. The study uses a cultural-historical methodological approach and Hedegaard’s “dialectical-interactive research approach” (2008b, p. 43) to analyse the data. Three different examples of a focus child, Apa, and the researcher’s participation in different play vignettes will be presented. It has been found that a researcher needs to be really skillful when taking the “doubleness approach” (Hedegaard 2008d, p. 203) of simultaneously taking part in the children’s play and video recording the moments of play. The findings also show that positioning the camera in a way where it can capture the play moments and participants’ expressions, enabled the researcher to be an active play participant in the play and to understand the play theme from the children’s perspectives without taking the authority away from the children. The authors argue that using digital video technology could be a useful analytical tool for the researcher to understand the participants’ perspectives and the research context itself.