Participatory engagement and social research: methods toolkit

4. Overview of Methods

Table 3 below provides an overview of methods that may be used to conduct SEIA, with a summary of the method and the advantages and issues to consider. More details of each method are provided in Section 6. Methods are listed alphabetically. When developing a strategy for undertaking an SEIA, it is worthwhile considering how different methods may complement each other, and to reflect on which methods are appropriate for different steps of the SEIA process depending on the purpose and desired outcome. Within the same development or intervention, it may therefore be appropriate to draw on more than one method across the development or intervention span according to the stage and progress of it.

Table 3: Methods overview and key points

Archival research

• Brief Summary: Archival research, for example old newspaper reports or planning applications, can yield insight into the history of marine developments or interventions and experiences with new infrastructure in the locality. Understanding previous experiences – especially negative experiences – may indicate where and why communities could have concerns.
• Activity: Stakeholder mapping, Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis.
• Advantages: Can give a sense of historical context with lower risk of stirring up negative or unpleasant memories. Online news sources and digital planning portals mean assessment can be done remotely.
• Issues to consider: Cannot assume responses to different kinds of infrastructure in the past will reflect responses to new issues in the present. In-depth records and archives may not be available for every region or locality.
• Use in practice: This method is explored in a research project examining the challenges of conducting SEIA in coastal regions, available here.

Citizens’ Juries

• Brief Summary: Small groups of people (chosen to represent a cross-section of the community) are brought together over an extended period to consider issues in depth. They are presented with different information and perspectives from experts that are then debated to help them reach conclusions about the topic.
• Activity: Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts.
• Advantages: Can be enjoyable and engaging for participants, and their views may evolve during the process. A chance to consider issues in-depth, and to ask questions of experts. Examples show that diverse groups of participants can work together, develop solutions, and build consensus.
• Issues to consider: Time consuming and costly to run. Requires organisation and facilitation, and participation from experts to give input. Requires significant effort and time commitment from citizen members. This may provide barriers to participation.
• Use in practice: Scotland’s Climate Assembly – a group of people, broadly representative of the Scottish population, focused on how to address climate change; information available here. A research project for ClimateXChange used Citizens Juries to consider wind farm development in Scotland; available here.

Community events

• Brief Summary: Presence and participation at community events, aimed at providing information on a development or intervention and raising awareness (e.g. drop-in sessions, ‘town hall’ meetings, information exhibitions). These offer an opportunity to collect feedback and gauge community reactions.
• Activity: Stakeholder engagement, Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts.
• Advantages: Can be personalised and interactive, people can attend in social groups, can be readily accessible. Can focus public attention on one element. Conducive to media coverage. Allows for different levels of information sharing. Linking public information and engagement events with SEIA activities can help to reduce risk of ‘research fatigue’ by reducing number of events and time commitment on community members.
• Issues to consider: Brief attention spans limit amount of information that can be conveyed, with competition for attention at events. Usually expensive to do it well, and can damage image of development or intervention if not done well. Locations are critical, and the public must be motivated to attend. Depending on nature of development or intervention - important to keep a distinction between community events which may be designed to inform/consult; and SEIA activities which have the goal of understanding community concerns and providing empowerment.
• Use in practice: An example of this in practice related to the QICS experimental carbon dioxide release into Ardmucknish Bay, Argyll, Scotland. As a new and potentially contentious development, passive observation at community events was agreed to be the best way of systematically assessing community responses without inducing additional anxiety or stress; information available here.

Focus groups

• Brief Summary: Interactive sessions with small groups, of community members (and/or stakeholders) to explore views and perceptions of impacts. May use a range of tools to elicit ideas about impacts.
• Activity: Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts, Mitigation, Monitoring.
• Advantages: Can be useful for fostering discussion, sharing between participants, and encouraging communication and debate. Can be used to evaluate different options and weigh up the importance of different factors.
• Issues to consider: The value of the data may depend on facilitation - ensuring that some voices do not dominate, and that techniques are used to encourage discussion. The scope of the focus group is significant; are options for discussion open or limited? Minimal opportunity to ask questions or for two-way discussion about potential impacts.
• Use in practice: The Associated Programme on Flood Management recommend using focus groups for SEIA; details of their approach are available here.

Landscape immersion

• Brief Summary: Participants are asked to walk around the proposed site of a development or intervention, and note their feelings about the sea and/or landscape. They are then asked to do the walk again imagining the development or intervention in place. This is a hypothetical exercise – participants are asked to imagine what the landscape would be like with the development or intervention in place – but it is an exercise that takes in that landscape.
• Activity: Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts.
• Advantages: Generates rich, meaningful data. Allows and encourages respondents to articulate and express their views. Respects the particular place and the lived experience of that location.
• Issues to consider: Time intensive. May need staff in situ to explain process and facilitate effectively. Data is specific to each respondent, and unlikely to provide opportunities for discussion or to ask questions.
• Use in practice: This method was used in research funded by Creative Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage to explore impacts from a new wind farm from the perspectives of a local community; information available here.

One-to-one interviews

• Brief Summary: One-to-one discussions and interviews with community members or key stakeholders to gain in-depth information and understanding.
• Activity: Stakeholder mapping, Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts, Mitigation.
• Advantages: Can be open-ended or more unstructured, allowing for open or more specific responses. Familiar format, and should be straightforward to organise, allowing the exploration of issues in-depth.
• Issues to consider: Scheduling multiple interviews can be time consuming. There is no chance for participants to interact with others.
• Use in practice: Research by UCL on the use of SEIA to understand and address key issues in planning in London used interviews with community members to identify key issues and challenges that they were facing; information available here.

Ongoing advisory panel

• Brief Summary: A panel may be formed to work alongside developments or interventions and meet at regular interviews to provide input, hear about progress, and feedback their views. Often made up of key stakeholders and representatives from the community.
• Activity: Stakeholder engagement, Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts, Mitigation, Monitoring.
• Advantages: Useful as an ongoing process to keep key members in touch with progress. Relatively easy to convene, with familiar procedures. Can help participants to understand the development or intervention, and give their views at different stages. Can help to build trust with members and credibility for the development or intervention.
• Issues to consider: Usually involves a small number of members involved, often experts; community members may not be able to participate on an ongoing basis due to time commitment. Care needs to be taken in selecting the membership, to try to ensure representativeness for the larger community.
• Use in practice: An example of using a consultation group throughout a development is the Middelgrunden offshore wind farm – details are available here.

Participatory appraisal

• Brief Summary: This focuses on participants and allowing them to express themselves in ways which are meaningful to them. Non-directive questions are used to encourage discussion in ways that do not impose external opinions. Everyone is treated as an ‘expert’ - as people who ‘know how things really are’. Emphasis is placed on the use of highly visual tools and techniques, potentially more inclusive than approaches that rely solely on the written word. The aim is to eliminate barriers in participation and include the views of as many different people as possible.
• Activity: Stakeholder mapping, Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts, Mitigation , Monitoring.
• Advantages: Rich, meaningful responses are generated, exploring issues in depth, and providing the opportunity to really find out what matters to people and why. An inclusive approach which values and respects the view given, and can encourage responses. Engages those likely to be affected by change, and can help build capacity.
• Issues to consider: Can be hard to fit into standard research models. It may not be possible to translate all responses into feedback which is useful for a development or intervention. Can be time-consuming to run and to analyse. Requires facilitation to guide respondents through the process.
• Use in practice: A series of projects on ‘Mapping Tranquillity’ used participatory appraisal to explore value and meaning with participants; information available here Similar approaches have been used for a range of projects exploring community views and values – such as research on communities and neighbourhoods, available here.

Public dialogues

• Brief Summary: Public dialogues create opportunities for face-to-face conversations between community members, experts, and key stakeholders. Sessions can use a range of tools to exchange and explore issues in depth, allowing time for discussion and reflection. Can be used to provide information, share ideas, explain values, and how these influence perceptions of impacts.
• Activity: Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts, Mitigation, Monitoring.
• Advantages: Generate rich and valuable data. There is opportunity to discuss and ask questions and explore issues; and for mutual learning between community members and key stakeholders and designated experts. Can help to ensure different views are heard and respected.
• Issues to consider: Need to ensure a balance of different community members; cannot be assumed to be representative of the population as a whole. Strong facilitation is required; time commitments involved. Very rich data can be more complex to feed into decision-making.
• Use in practice: A Sciencewise project for Marine Scotland, exploring community responses to marine renewable energy developments, used scenario mapping as part of the conversations that were held with members of the public in a variety of locations around Scotland. See the full report here.

Public meetings

• Brief Summary: A gathering for a large group of people, usually with presentations from a panel, and the opportunity for community members to ask questions and give comments. Open to all who can attend.
• Activity: Stakeholder engagement, Maintain good practice.
• Advantages: A good opportunity for a large number of people to engage and participate, and at the same time. An opportunity for decision-makers to hear from the community. Can be widely advertised and provide a visible presence in the community.
• Issues to consider: Information can be given, but there is little opportunity for two-way discussion. Loud voices can dominate, and potential speakers discouraged. Can be difficult to facilitate effectively, and does not often provide the opportunity for debate or building consensus.
• Use in practice: Public meetings often form part of a range of methods used by developers when engaging communities about proposed wind farms. More details are given in a research report on this topic, available here.

Scenario mapping

• Brief Summary: This provides a means to discuss and explore different options, giving participants the opportunity to consider how these might affect the things that they value. Different criteria can be used to assess the different options presented. The principal factors that influence perceptions can be identified. Trade-offs between different factors in various scenarios can be explored.
• Activity: Predict Impacts, Mitigation, Monitoring.
• Advantages: This method can provide a useful basis for discussion, exploring why certain scenarios are preferred, and drawing out meaning and value. Can be a valuable way of getting participants engaged in the process, can be visual and interesting. Realistic scenarios can help to envisage change. Trade-offs between factors can be useful to inform planning. Can be used at different stages; early on, or when more details of a development or intervention are available.
• Issues to consider: The scope of the scenarios can limit discussion. The options presented may not feel realistic or include ideas that participants would have valued. Requires facilitation and skill in developing the scenarios. Can be difficult to keep realistic. May be time-consuming and use specialised computer software.
• Use in practice: A Sciencewise development or intervention for Marine Scotland, exploring community responses to marine renewable energy developments used scenario mapping as part of the conversations. that were held with members of the public in a variety of locations around Scotland. See the full report here. The community consultations for the Tiree offshore wind farm used scenario mapping to explore different options; information available here.

Secondary data analysis

• Brief Summary: This broadly refers to the re-use or further analysis of existing data, as a means of gaining insight into a topic by making use of research and data collection that has already been undertaken. Secondary data analysis can refer to quantitative data (e.g. censuses, surveys) as well as qualitative (e.g. interview transcripts).
• Activity: Stakeholder mapping, Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts.
• Advantages: Making further use of existing data can give insights into trends and potential issues within a community, without placing additional burden on the community to provide additional information. The risk of ‘research fatigue’, or of inducing concern about the possible impacts of the development or intervention, can therefore be reduced.
• Issues to consider: May be difficult to access existing data if it contains personally-identifiable information (e.g. Addresses, dates of birth etc) and especially qualitative data, such as interviews and focus groups. Conditions of use will have been set out at the time the data was collected, so it is preferable to negotiate and agree access before data is collected if possible, so that information about data-sharing can be built into privacy notices and participant consent forms.
• Use in practice: The Scottish Government’s (2015) Mapping Flood Disadvantage report, linking socio-economic and environmental data, is an example of this, available here.

Social media analysis

• Brief Summary: Publicly available social media postings on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. can be viewed to gauge initial public reactions to proposed developments, or indeed to understand drivers about a sense of place and local identity.
• Activity: Stakeholder mapping, Gather contextual information, Scoping, Maintain good practice.
• Advantages: Relatively unobtrusive way of viewing reactions and responses in community. May allow influential organisations and/or individuals, who may not be represented in formal consultation processes, to be identified.
• Issues to consider: Small and vocal minority of people can create distorted sense of opposition. Important not to overlook views of those who are not online. Some ethical issues around viewing social media content, even if public domain.
• Use in practice: Analysis of Twitter data to assess societal reactions to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, available here.

Structured consensus-building

• Brief Summary: This aims to elicit consensus from respondents on the social impacts of a development or intervention, or to identify common priorities and recommendations. This may involve the ranking and/or scoring of priority issues (e.g. with Delphi Methods and Q-Methodology) either individually or collaboratively; or the facilitated development of a position paper and recommendations based on citizens’ responses to project information and expert inputs (such as focus conferences).
• Activity: Predict Impacts, Mitigation, Monitoring.
• Advantages: Can identify areas of common concern/priority on issues with limited baseline data; or where there is the potential for different stakeholder or citizen groups to have very different viewpoints, as a means of identifying possible points of consensus or areas of shared interest. Dialogue processes during consensus-building activities can offer rich insights into participants’ thought processes.
• Issues to consider: Processes require careful design and set-up, including judicious selection of both participants and expert speakers. Also requires skilful facilitation so as to guide participants to explain and articulate their preferences without excessively prompting or steering them.
• Use in practice: A consensus conference was held in Moray, Scotland, for the SiteChar offshore carbon capture and storage research project; further information is available here.

Surveying

• Brief Summary: Surveying encompasses a breadth of approaches – face-to-face, online, telephone – which may be used to assess respondents’ views towards a proposed development, or their attitudes to how a development or intervention is progressing across the operation phase.
• Activity: Gather contextual information, Scoping, Baseline analysis, Predict Impacts, Mitigation, Maintain good practice.
• Advantages: Enables a large number of opinions to be solicited. Quantitative responses allow trends or common themes to be identified and visualised; open-ended questions can elicit deeper and richer information.
• Issues to consider: Surveying may be of limited value in understanding concerns for new technologies where public awareness is low and opinions unstable. Information may be less full and detailed than other methods, and limited opportunity to follow on responses, or ask questions.
• Use in practice: An example of this is discussions that were held with a host community about compensation for a nearby carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) project, which compared the preferences of Dutch citizens and local government authorities. Information available here; and summary here.

Tours and field trips

• Brief Summary: Visits to other developments or interventions or communities for citizens, key stakeholders, and other interested parties; opportunities for discussions with those who have experienced similar potential impacts (both positive and negative).
• Activity: Predict Impacts.
• Advantages: A valuable and interesting way to envisage a development or intervention, and gain from the experience of other communities. Can reduce concern by making choices more familiar. Discussing with others what has worked well/not well can be very valuable. Opportunity to share and discuss ideas with others on the visit.
• Issues to consider: Need to find a community willing to host a visit. Can be limited to certain community members/stakeholders because of time and potential cost involved. Likely to be available to small numbers of people only. May be hard to directly apply the situation from one community to another.
• Use in practice: Communities on islands off the east coast of the US organised visits to proposed and existing offshore wind farms to understand impacts and the role of community benefits – information is available here.