Valuing Our Natural Environment Final Report ... - HM Treasury

Valuing Our Natural Environment – Final Report - Annex1
More generally, questionnaires can provide useful background data for decision-making and
deliberative processes of all sorts. While questionnaires are not really a substitute for
participation they can be a very useful as a complement to participatory results, which
generally suffer from a lack of statistical significance or ‘true representativeness’.
Interviews and questionnaires can also be used to recruit participants for further research.
This can be as simple as adding a question "would you be willing to take part in …?", but
often advantage can be taken of the opportunity to select participants such that a spread
of demographic characteristics, attitudes and behaviours is represented in the focus groups,
jury, etc.
A1.2.2 Focus groups, In-depth groups
A1.2.2.1 Objectives
Focus groups aim to discover the positions of participants regarding, and/or explore how
participants interact when discussing, a pre-defined issue or set of related issues.
In-depth groups are similar in some respects, but may meet on several occasions, and are
much less closely facilitated, with the emphasis being more on how the group creates
discourse on the topic.
A1.2.2.2 Value concept encapsulated
In theory focus groups and in-depth groups can consider any concept of value. Generally,
monetary valuation of an environmental good or service is not the objective of the exercise
(but see below). More likely, the group will focus on how to choose between conflicting
objectives, or on what decision should be made in a particular circumstance, or on the
reasons underlying particular behaviours or responses to policy. The format does not
necessarily encourage "citizen" values, indeed it can concentrate on private motives for
behaviour, but the format also lends itself to consideration of what society should do.
A1.2.2.3 Theoretical basis
Focus groups and in-depth groups are research methods which can be integrated into
deliberative processes. That is, these methods have developed as tools for understanding
how individuals and groups frame and understand different issues and policies. However
this can also be used as a part of a deliberative process in which the participants
themselves might use the focus group to understand their own and others' attitudes prior to
other aspects of group work, such as taking part in a citizens' jury.
Work with small groups can be grounded in a variety of theoretical frameworks. For
example, sociological theories of ‘symbolic interactionism’ draw on the idea of humans as
social beings. The sense of being a unique individual derives from our total immersion in
the relational processes of social interaction which constitute the contexts of everyday life.
Communicative processes (talk, actions, representations, discourses etc) are fundamental
elements of social interaction and provide part of the rules/structures within which
individuals play their parts. There are other possibilities: a social theoretical approach
holds that preferences are personal expressions, whereas values find embodiment in social
actions and the organisations that support them. How nature is valued, therefore, cannot
be separated from the ways in which society is organised and functions. In-depth groups
draw their principles and practices from Group Analytic theory, and aim to give maximum
freedom to participants to define and develop their own discourse.
What small groups do – to a greater or lesser extent – is to provide structured opportunities
for social interaction in which the participants are able to communicate with one another
to explore different elements of whatever is the substance of the enquiry.
A1.2.2.4 Process of implementation
The practical undertaking of a focus group/in-depth group typically entails a number of
stages:
eftec A34
December 2006