Offshore renewables - social impact: two way conversation with the people of Scotland

4 Methodology

Overview of chapter

This chapter details the methodology used in undertaking the project, including:

• Dialogue approach
• Data sources and processing
• Analytical approach

4.1 Dialogue approach

Sciencewise’s approach^[16] to public dialogue identifies four essential elements which – together with evaluation – need to be ensured in public dialogues on science and technology. The ways in which these elements were provided in the public dialogue on the social impacts of offshore renewables are described in the sub-sections below.

4.1.1 Context – clear conditions leading to the dialogue process

Marine Scotland’s Planning Scotland’s Seas consultations in 2013 covered a range of marine planning and development issues including:

• A draft National Marine Plan;
• Draft plan options for Offshore Renewable Energy;
• Priority Marine Features;
• Integration between marine and terrestrial planning; and
• Marine Protected Areas network^[17].

The Consultation Analysis Report collated a number of concerns about perceived weaknesses or gaps in relation to social impacts, including:

• The Sustainability Appraisal Report, addressing wider sustainability issues, was, “at a high level or provided only summary information”^[18];
• The information provided is complex for lay readers^[19];
• More research was needed into the social and economic impacts on local areas, and particularly on island groups, resulting from displacement of commercial fishing activity^[20];
• “The social and economic measures only deal with employment and that this does not fully encompass ‘value’, both material and in terms of well-being”^[21];
• There should have been a qualitative assessment of impacts alongside quantitative socioeconomic assessments^[22]; and
• There was insufficient consideration of impacts on local communities^[23].

Marine Scotland sees consultation as a key part of developing the sectoral marine plans, although securing the participation of members of the public has not been easy. Following on from the Planning Scotland’s Seas consultation, the dialogue was intended to feed into:

• Facilitating input from a wider cross-section of the public;
• Improving the way the organisation engages with members of the public;
• Improving the way that the organisation takes account of the potential positive and negative impacts of offshore renewables on things that people value; and
• Contributing to the development of the Scottish Government’s overall approach to impact assessment.

4.1.2 Scope – the range of issues and policy opinions covered in the dialogue

The main focus of the dialogue was on understanding the things that individuals and communities in Scotland value and their perceptions as to how these might be affected, positively or negatively, by the development of offshore renewables. There had been little opportunity previously to explore public views on offshore renewables in a systematic way.

The dialogue events were held in locations with different geographies, ecologies and social and cultural characteristics. While the dialogue was primarily intended to explore the views of people who live in coastal areas, it was also felt important to get the views of people in inland areas who would be affected more indirectly by the development of offshore renewables. The dialogue included a group in Glasgow who discussed the same issues. This was valuable to get a sense of whether there were different perspectives on social values and how they might be impacted, positively or negatively as well as the extent to which the views and priorities of people in coastal communities were understood by people living in other parts of Scotland.

4.1.3 Delivery – the dialogue process itself

The dialogue sessions created opportunities for face-to-face conversations between specialists, stakeholders and members of the public. The sessions used engaging information and activities in a variety of formats to enable participants to familiarise themselves with the topic and explore issues in depth, allowing time for reflection and iteration.

The dialogue events were run as two rounds of a single conversation with a logical progression from Round 1 to Round 2. Round 1 focused on lived experience: participants identified and described the things that they most valued and discussed how these might be affected positively or negatively by the development of different kinds of offshore renewables technologies. They also considered how they would like to engage with Marine Scotland on these issues in the future. Round 2 then provided an opportunity to review the outputs from across the six Round 1 locations and talk about how the kinds of public perspectives emerging could be taken into account in future SIAs.

The six dialogue events in Round 1 were held in community centres or familiar local venues, each involving a group of up to 18 local people and up to 3 specialist participants. Public participants were encouraged to start from their own experience and local knowledge to identify the things that they most value. They then explored the topic of offshore renewable energy development in relation to scenarios that were relevant to their lives but that prompted wider questions about aspects such as social equity and risks.

Round 2 was held in Glasgow and brought together a group of ten people, made up of between one and three people from each of the Round 1 locations. The participants’ increased confidence in the value of their own views and perspectives as well as greater knowledge about offshore renewables meant that they were able to reflect on similarities and differences between locations and the kind of process and techniques could be used in assessing social impacts to ensure that the range of things that are important to and valued by individuals and communities are picked up.

4.1.4 Impact – the desired outcomes of the dialogue

The outcomes and impacts of the dialogue are described in this report. The main intended impacts which the dialogue was expected to produce were (see Table 1.1 also):

• Greater information and understanding of social impacts: particularly about the potential social impacts of offshore renewables development for people and communities in coastal areas of Scotland;
• Better SIA contributing to improved future policy and planning: by sharing with decision-makers the evidence from the dialogues on the social impacts of offshore renewables and the participants’ conclusions and recommendations. This evidence should be used to improve policy and planning, both in the marine environment and more widely;
• The development of SIA methods: including methods for gathering and understanding the views of members of the public on the social impacts of offshore renewables; and
• Support for the use of public dialogue to inform policy-development: participants, policymakers and scientists should feel that the dialogue was a worthwhile and legitimate part of the policy-making process.

4.2 Data sources and processing

This Report draws on data generated in the six Round 1 and one Round 2 dialogue events. The different kinds of data are summarised in Figure 1.1. Further information on the dialogue approach and methods used can be found in Chapters 5 and 8.

Table 4.1 Overview of data sources that inform this report

Data source / method

Round 1 data sources / methods

Description of data collected

Round 1 data sources / methods

Data source / method

Concentric circle pictures

Description of data collected

Almost blank sheets of paper with a figure in the centre of three pale concentric circles.

Each participant was asked to write or draw the things that were most important to him or her around the figure, using the circles to give an idea of relative importance; i.e. nearer to the figure = more important.

Data source / method

Mapping social values discussions

Description of data collected

Typed records of the table discussions while participants were finding icons to represent the things of importance they had identified (concentric circles exercise) and placing these on the map of a hypothetical coastal location, to create a community that had the elements they felt were important.

Data source / method

Discussion of realistic scenarios for the development of offshore renewables

Description of data collected

Typed records of table and plenary discussions of four scenarios for offshore renewables development:

• One generic scenario (covering the elements common to the development of any kind of offshore renewable energy); and
• Three renewable energy scenarios (two wind technologies and one tidal technology).

Review and summary of all the scenarios.

Data source / method

Future communications and engagement with Marine Scotland

Description of data collected

Typed records of plenary discussion of ways in which participants would like to engage with Marine Scotland or the Scottish Government on offshore renewables in the future.

Data source / method

Before and after posters

Description of data collected

Three posters used to measure changes in participants’ opinions of key topics between the start and end of the workshop.

Data source / method

Round 2 data sources / methods

Description of data collected

Round 2 data sources / methods

Data source / method

Verification of the social values and impacts clusters created from the analysis of Round 1 results

Description of data collected

Typed records of group discussions around two sets of maps: one showing the things that had been identified as important to participants during Round 1 (i.e. ‘social values‘); and the other showing clusters of the potential impacts on these social values of marine offshore renewables.

Data source / method

SIA timeline / process diagram

Description of data collected

Typed records of group discussions and annotations on a poster timeline of the stages of SIA, indicating participants’ views of the points on the timeline when social values should be considered.

Data source / method

Techniques for assessing social values in SIA

Description of data collected

Typed records of group discussions of three different techniques for assessing or presenting social values in SIA: surveys, indicators and dialogue.

Data source / method

Before and after posters

Description of data collected

Three posters used to measure changes in participants’ opinions of key topics between the start and end of the workshop.

All the data collected was checked for accuracy and consistency and to ensure that participants’ contributions were anonymised. The data was recorded in Microsoft Word documents and analysed using the Dedoose^[24] software package.

4.3 Analytical approach

An inductive (bottom-up) as well as a deductive (top-down) thematic approach was used. Broadly this involved coding the data according to themes which were either already named / identified (deductive) or that emerged from the data (inductive). We were cautious of not wanting to constrain the data by only looking for already named categories (e.g. themes / concepts from the analytical framework – see Chapter 2) but at the same time we wanted to see how far the SIA impact categories and the resilience categories were useful in describing the data.

The Dedoose software package allows codes to be added to pieces of text and then for those excerpts to be exported to enable further analysis of themes. It also has functions to enable the examination of co-occurrence of codes, and the frequency of codes within specific pieces of text.

Before the coding started we developed an initial code tree (see Appendix 5) which used three main code headings:

• Codes reflecting the analytical frameworks being explored by the project;
• Values related to the eight SIA impact categories^[25] and their sub-categories
• Values related to the five resilience capacities (including community capital, which is seen as similar to social capital)
• Codes for participants’ responses to themes raised by the facilitators in all the workshops (e.g. potential benefits, specific groups impacted etc); and
• Codes to identify comments referring to the generic or to specific technology scenarios.

A descriptor was applied to each location to make it possible to filter results and make comparisons.

During coding, additional codes were added to capture themes emerging in the discussions and specific types of input, e.g. questions asked by participants (see Appendix 6 for that list).

Using Dedoose, it was possible to identify the codes that appear most frequently and to use this as a pragmatic means of prioritising the analysis. Filters were also used to allow comparison between locations in terms of the codes that came up and the way topics were discussed.

Once the data had been coded excerpts relating to individual codes were exported and then analysed further looking for links and relationships within the code and also between codes. Within the values data, where codes related to each other they were grouped into larger themes.

For Round 2, as a smaller amount of information was involved and the elements had been organised around a set of questions, the data was tabulated and analysed manually by theme.

4.3.1 Considerations on the relevance of quantitative analysis

Throughout the discussion, as appropriate references are made to the number of times topics came up during the discussions. This information is included to provide an indication of how frequently issues were brought up. The numbers are not used as a ranking mechanism. Sciencewise dialogues generate qualitative data with smaller numbers of participants than would generally be used in the case of quantitative techniques. The purpose is to elicit arguments that stand on their own merits rather than generate agreements or draw conclusions of ‘the majority view’.

The qualitative and contextually-specific nature of the data generated through the dialogue, as well as the relatively small number of participants involved, make it difficult to generalise from the findings, for example to people living in coastal communities across Scotland.

4.3.2 Ethical considerations

All information provided by participants has been treated as confidential. Direct and indirect quotations from participants are used throughout the report as qualitative evidence to clarify and illustrate links between data, interpretation and conclusions. All quotations have been anonymised although the quotes indicate which dialogue event the participant was from.