Determination of preference, word count and content units for two types of photographic stimuli presented to African American adults

Twelve African American (AA) adults were presented with previously used photographs (old) and ethnically relevant (new) photographs of AA individuals. They completed a preferential sorting task and a discourse task to determine word counts and content units. The new relevant photographs were developed from input by an AA focus group. A second focus group identified content units. Participants showed no preference for new vs. old photographs. Word count varied broadly across photographs without differences between old and new photographs. For discourse, responses were unique for each photographic pair. Higher content units were found for the old kitchen, old picnic, old game and new car photographs. Qualitative measures of discourse indicated a consistent use of a topic-centered vs. topic elaborative style of discourse. Results suggest that culturally relevant photographs do not elicit higher content discourse. Testing formats and testing environments may have influenced responses.