Study title

United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland, Uganda, Bolivia, China, Nepal

Individual

Respondents for the Q methodology aspect of this study were selected purposively to represent the broadest range of perspectives from international and national contexts on the issues of conservation and poverty in the global south. The total number of respondents engaged for this work is 37. An ‘international’ dataset comprised 12 respondents who work for organisations headquartered in North America and Europe, with at least some initiatives in the global south. This included all mainstream, prominent, conservation organisations, and further, smaller organisations representing a diversity of approaches, for instance, focused particularly on charismatic or endangered species, or conservation with development. The sampling strategy also sought to include the perspectives of a number of respondents from national level conservation organisations, to investigate aspects of debates about conservation and poverty in national settings. These country case studies were selected to be illustrative of widely differing geographies in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the countries chosen were Bolivia, China, Nepal, and Uganda. As case studies, these were not selected to be representative (Flyvbjerg, 2006), for instance at a continental scale, but instead to illustrate the character of debates manifest at national scale in diverse countries. Respondents numbers from the country case study datasets comprise: Bolivia (5 respondents), China (7 respondents), Nepal (7 respondents), Uganda (6 respondents).A standardised Q methodology protocol was used throughout the research to ensure internal validity. Within organisations, we typically sought a Q methodology response from the respondent with the role most closely associated with local people. Respondents were asked to represent their own views, rather than to represent an organisation, to avoid ambiguity and because of respondents’ understandable reluctance to claim to represent sometimes large and complex organisations. The sample contains 26 male and 13 female respondents. Data were collected over the course of a year, starting in April 2016. All respondents gave informed consent to participate in the study, and we maintain anonymity of respondents throughout. A Q study starts by defining statements reflecting the range of perspectives on a topic and in relation to the research questions. Stephenson (1952; 223) argued that the Q set (of statements chosen for a study) should be designed ‘to suit the particular requirements of an investigation’, and Watts and Stenner (2012) note that a balanced Q set is representative without core ideas missing. We used statements from primary empirical material (international sample interviews) and from a document analysis of secondary material released by sampled conservation organisations, which we had previously coded for qualitative analysis. We also incorporated statements that we developed to ascertain responses to specific ethical principles. This combination of primary and secondary material is acceptable within Q methodology (Sandbrook et al. 2010; Watts and Stenner, 2012). Adhering to the aims of representativeness and balance in statement design, we selected 32 statements from an initial list of 126, reducing the number by eliminating statements of lower relevance, or redundant statements whose meaning was more effectively conveyed by retained statements. Some statements were altered slightly for clarity or to reverse their meaning, to improve balance (Watts and Stenner, 2012). This Q set was then piloted with 8 respondents, after which some small changes for clarity were made. The grid used is displayed in Figure 1, and respondents were asked to sort statements from ‘most like I think’ to ‘least like I think’. The grid is in the form: 2; 2; 4; 5; 6; 5; 4; 2; 2. The internet software, htmlQ (https://github.com/aproxima/htmlq), was used to administer the Q survey with international respondents. Respondents in Bolivia, China, Nepal and Uganda were engaged with a paper version of the same Q exercise immediately after their interview. As regards the ‘forced versus free’ distinction, we encouraged respondents to follow the grid as closely as possible. Rather than as a requirement of statistical analysis, this encourages respondents to prioritise statements and place those most salient to them at the extremes (McKeown and Thomas, 1998; Watts and Stenner, 2012). The interviews were conducted in English with international, Ugandan and Nepalese respondents. However, the Bolivian and Chinese respondents were engaged in Spanish and Mandarin respectively. For the Bolivian and Chinese studies, Q statements were available in these languages as well as English (printed on the reverse of the cards), to aid understanding. Statement translations were undertaken by the bilingual leaders of country case studies, and checked using back translation to ensure validity.