EXPERIENCING AND WITNESSING INEQUITIES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

ABOUT OUR PHOTOVOICE PROJECT

Research completed at Portland State University
by the Spring 2020 Community Psychology Graduate Class
as part of the Applied Psychology Doctoral Program

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities, including Portland State University, were forced to move classes online. This shift led to unprecedented administrative changes and added levels of difficulty for faculty, staff, and students. For the majority of the students in the graduate Community Psychology class, this was their first introduction to the field. As a way to promote learning and account for the collaborative aspect of the class, made harder to fulfill via a virtual platform, we had the opportunity to virtually meet with other Community Psychology graduate classes at various universities in the U.S. 
Naturally, our discussions during these meetings, as well as our discussions of the literature, turned to the pandemic and the inequities we were witnessing. Our meetings with the other Community Psychology graduate classes sparked interest in a class photovoice project that would allow us to connect and apply what we were learning about the field to the current events. With the current study, we aimed to explore inequities in well-being that we experienced or witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic through the use of the photovoice methodology.