Seventy-four students from underrepresented groups portrayed their first-semester college experience through privately-shared, captioned Instagram photos elicited by text message prompts. Longitudinal study analysis investigates the feasibility of this innovative visual data collection method, characterises the content of photos, and compares visual evidence to audio-diary data from the same students. The method succeeded in revealing detailed longitudinal accounts of students’ transition into college. Descriptive captions allowed participants to interpret their own images without the need for interviews, centring power with the student rather than the researcher. As compared with photo elicitation, collecting captioned images offers a more manageable, cost-effective way of collecting longitudinal data from relatively large, geographically dispersed samples. High response rates suggest that a familiar social media format like Instagram is a good fit for young adults and a promising approach for recruiting and retaining low-income, first-generation, and racially underrepresented minority students in research studies.

来自代表性不足群体的 74 名学生通过由短信提示引发的私人分享、带标题的 Instagram 照片来描述他们第一学期的大学经历。纵向研究分析调查了这种创新的视觉数据收集方法的可行性，描述了照片的内容，并将视觉证据与来自同一学生的音频日记数据进行了比较。该方法成功地揭示了学生进入大学的详细纵向记录。描述性标题允许参与者在不需要采访的情况下解释自己的图像，将权力集中在学生而不是研究人员身上。与照片启发相比，收集带字幕的图像提供了一种更易于管理、更具成本效益的方式来收集相对较大的纵向数据，地理上分散的样本。高回复率表明，像 Instagram 这样熟悉的社交媒体格式非常适合年轻人，并且是一种有前途的方法，可以在研究中招募和留住低收入、第一代和种族代表性不足的少数族裔学生。