Knowledge transfer: methods taken up
Postgraduate research funded by the SPEaR Linkages programme is informing social policy research, as the following case shows.
From 2003, doctoral student Iris Hutchinson at the School of Government (Victoria University of Wellington) received a SPEaR Linkages postgraduate scholarship to support her research on Q-methodology — a methodology that combines qualitative and quantitative research techniques to reveal people’s views and assumptions in order to deepen understanding of the issues.
“Q-methodology is useful in social policy research because it provides a way of understanding complex policy situations and enabling multiple points of view to be taken into account. It avoids many of the problems with conventional consultation mechanisms and provides an efficient way of working with a diverse range of views,” Iris says.
As a result of Iris’s work, Q-methodology was taken up by the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD) Defining Community Needs project, which aimed to provide a range of views about how the terms ‘community’ and ‘need’ were understood by representatives from the community and across government. It used the Q-methodology approach for four separate studies of community representatives and staff from MSD, the Department of Labour and the Department of Internal Affairs.
The findings pointed to strong contrasts between the views of community representatives and the cross-government perspective, suggesting that current policies do not capture the operational or functional aspects of ‘community’. Through the use of Q-methodology, the project has emphasised the importance of understanding a range of views, and how these views could be used to form and inform a relevant policy position.
A second project to use Q-methodology is the Ageing in Place project. MSD’s Centre for Social Research and Evaluation’s Older and Working Age People Research and Evaluation unit is exploring the relationship between older people, working-age people, communities and ‘ageing in place’. ‘Ageing in place’ is defined as an older person’s ability to make choices about where to live, and to receive the support needed to do so. Many older people see remaining in their own home as a key component of this.
Whereas previous studies have identified the costs and implications of informal care of older people, few studies have focused in detail on the perspectives and viewpoints of the working-age and older family members in relation to the obligations, responsibilities, rewards, opportunities and costs of a range of ‘caring scenarios’. This study aims to address this gap, and uses a multi-method approach that incorporates Q-methodology.
“This is a nice example of how local leading-edge research that is connected to international thinking can translate directly into improving Government approaches to important issues. The ingredients for successful uptake in this case were a combination of high-quality scholarship and good relationships between academics and government-based researchers. Both parties need to be proactive and innovative,” notes SPEaR Project Manager Paul Honeybone.
For more information, contact info@spear.govt.nz
