A Common-Sense Methodology for STS Studies

1. A Common-Sense Methodology for STS Studies Amanda Wolf Victoria University of Wellington 1-2 December 2008 Towards STS Networking in the Asia-Pacific Region

2. Overview • Q methodology has qualities that may advance some STS research objectives • Find out what people think • Find patterns in that thought • Consider the behavioural implications, the recursive influences, changes in all of the above • Q methodology belongs in toolkit because it ‘works’ with everyday ‘common sense’

3. The General ‘Case’ • A phenomenon enabled/conditioned by science and technology (and through individual and social responses), with ambiguous implications for individuals . . . • Thus, with ambiguous social implications – resistance, change, acceptance, and so . . . • Some perceived need for a public and/or social response

4. The Many Minds Challenge • Individuals and society, collectively, may be “of two [or more] minds” • In each case, people differ – should we: • Try to avoid conflict? Resolve it? Accommodate it? Better understand it? Steer through it? Prepare for the inevitable consequences of it? Etc. • First, find the “minds”

5. The Specific Case • Feeding our Futures, a social marketing campaign targeting parents and caregivers of 8 – 12 year olds with healthy eating messages • Individual genetics, energy balances; socially mediated context • Persuasion favoured policy instrument • Sphere of influence is the everyday

7. Common Sense • Judgemental faculty people use in ordinary, immediate, activities of daily living • Instinctual, insightful, ephemeral • Arises from a person’s beliefs, knowledge and experience • Thus partly peculiar to an individual, and partly shared and emergent in the social fabric of an individual’s culture

10. Q Methodology & Common Sense • We want to tap what is underneath the content when ‘common sense’ is at issue. • “This beach can be dangerous at any time” • “There’s the sun, so that direction is up” • Behind the “talk”, I know, and everyone knows . . . . And I make my choices

11. Q Methodology & Theory • “Subjectivity” is my point of view • My point of view is communicative behaviour – talk, what I say to myself (and others) about some event • Talk is everyday, ambiguous, emergent, but tied to the ‘vector’ of experience lived in some community/culture

12. Steps • Sample the ‘talk’ • Ask people to engage with sample in order to provide a picture (Q sort) of what is on their mind • Measure and meaning in one exercise • Correlate and factor analyse Q sorts • Interpret resulting patterns • Relate back to underlying common sense

13. Fourteen 9 –11 year old girls, recruited from a private school and a dance school Statements from interviews with girls in target demographic, supplemented by literature 34 statements, sorted from – 4 to + 4 The Study

14. Q-sort Score Sheet

15. Factor Analysis • Group participants together according to some underlying dimension of commonality • Each sort is correlated to some degree with underlying factor

17. I know what is good for ME Parents should influence their children, although you cannot force children to eat what they do not like You can’t just tell us, eat this, don’t eat that. I need reasons and to make up my own mind Consensus: Emerging Independence

18. Fine-grained Analysis • Factor 1: Internalised healthy; active consumer interest; “bored” by hype and rules • Factor 2: Like 1, but stronger parental influence • Factor 3: Admit liking bad food, through no fault of parent

19. Beyond Factor Interpretation • Subjectivity  patterns/composite images  understanding of subjectivity • Factor interpretations, or images, are rich pictures • An understanding of the subjectivity in the factors needs still to be teased out

20. Implications 1 • Respondents may not have “talk” on topic, but have a stance, or an identity, bearing on topic • Policy: social marketing “messages” may be better directed to identity than to healthy eating per se • General: Even if phenomenon not talked about in everyday conversations, people can engage with related or proxy ‘talk’ to reveal their inclinations or stance in ways that are informative

21. Implications 2 • Children’s communicative milieu privileges “truthfulness” and “boringness” • Policy: social marketing campaigns need to be cognizant of these dimensions, their interactions with each other and their interactions with the content at issue • General: groups may have privileged attitudes and values which traverse the terms of the scientific or technological debate

22. Implications 3 • Evidence of the transition in the children’s life-course. • Generally, transitions may be characterised by the co-existence of seemingly incompatible beliefs • Adults may not change belief structures instantaneously from black to white.

23. Conclusion • Q methodology enables an inquiry at the interface of some phenomenon and the social processes that measure its common-sense pulse and form its meanings • We may be able to understand the behaviours of people in reaction to some scientific or technological phenomenon better when we can see it as they do