A CommonSense Methodology for STS Studies

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Common Sense

• Judgemental faculty people use in ordinary,
  immediate, activities of daily living
• Instinctual, insightful, ephemeral
• Arises from a persons beliefs, knowledge and
  experience
• Thus partly peculiar to an individual, and partly
  shared and emergent in the social fabric of an
  individuals culture

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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
• Theres the sun, so that direction is up
• Behind the talk, I know, and everyone knows . .
  . . And I make my choices

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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

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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

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The Study

• 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

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Q-sort Score Sheet
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Factor Analysis

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

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Consensus Emerging Independence

• 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 cant just tell us, eat this, dont eat that.
  I need reasons and to make up my own mind

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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

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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

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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

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Implications 2

• Childrens 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

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Implications 3

• Evidence of the transition in the childrens
  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.

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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