Conducting the interviews

Human ethical research clearance for interviews was granted on 26/6/15 by the ethics coordinator, School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland.

Interviewees from the regional NRM organisations were recruited via email after an introduction from CSIRO. I contacted all of the 129 people on the contact list used by the AdaptNRM project team, of which 15 were no longer contactable at the given address. A reminder email yielded 23 interviewees. Regional NRM organisations (hereafter referred to

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as regional NRM groups as per participant usage) were grouped into eight biogeographic clusters in the broader program (Figure 3). I actively sort extra interviewees from under- represented clusters based on advice from the project engagement leader giving a total of 25 staff from regional NRM groups or approximately 22% of potentially available participants. Only one jurisdiction, the Northern Territory remained unrepresented (Table 5). A breakdown by cluster is not provided due to the risk of interviewee identification.

Members of the AdaptNRM project team and the funding agency were also interviewed in a similar manner with the idea of gaining different perspectives on the value of science engagement. However, these interviews have not been fully transcribed and are not included in this breakdown of interviewees or in quotes appearing in the results. Occasional reference to these interviews for background in the results and discussion refers to hand written notes taken at the time of interview.

Figure 3: Map of Regional NRM organisations showing clusters used for the Natural Resource Management Planning for Climate Change program.

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Table 5: Mode of interview with AdaptNRM decision-makers by jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction phone skype face-to- face total ACT 1 - - 1 NSW 6 1 - 7 QLD 3 1 2 6 SA 4 - - 4 TAS 1 1 - 2 VIC 2 - - 2 WA 2 1 - 3 Total 19 4 2 25

The project’s aim was to engage with regional NRM planners. While I can’t comment on the representativeness of my sample, the titles and roles of those interviewed was highly variable with less than half personally undertaking planning (Table 6). Managers ranged from high level general managers down to project managers while specialists were scientists, technical experts and monitoring and evaluation experts. Four interviewees mentioned they had changed roles during the roll-out of AdaptNRM which on top of the fifteen email bounce-backs indicates the churn in regional NRM staff also referenced by some interviewees. While not considered here, it is also pertinent to note that the public engaging with science through AdaptNRM consists of people beyond the 129 on the project contact list. All products (such as synthesis reports, maps and data sets) are publicly available on the AdaptNRM website for anyone to engage with.

Table 6: Breakdown of AdaptNRM interviewees by institutional role.

Title/role of interviewee Number of interviewees

People who actually did planning 11

Other specialists 4

Consultants 2

Managers 8

Interviewees were given three options of interview mode, although only those located in the same city as myself had the face-to-face option given I did not have the resources to travel to them:

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a) Face-to-face: in meeting rooms at the interviewee’s place of work; b) Skype: which allowed video as well as audio;

c) Phone: I called the interviewee on a landline or mobile phone according to the interviewee’s preference.

The vast majority (80%) opted for interview via telephone (Table 5). Small differences have been noted between face-to-face and telephone interviews, but conclusions drawn from the different modes are generally similar (Singleton Jr & Straits, 2012). The non-threatening nature of the interview questions, the similarity in interview lengths across modes, as well as there being only one interviewer indicate minimal impact from different interview modes. Given I was introduced to potential interviewees by a member of the project team, I may have been associated with them. However, I was also explicitly introduced as a student and I made clear at the beginning of all interviews that the research was contributing to my PhD and that I would make all reasonable efforts to maintain confidentiality from the project team. 3.3.3 Analysing interviews

All interviewees were asked permission to make an audio recording of the interview and all agreed. In addition to audio recordings, hand written notes were taken by the interviewer during interviews. Technical difficulties meant one interview could not be recorded and so the record is based on hand-written notes. Those notes were transcribed digitally within a week of the interview in dot point form. Audio files were transcribed verbatim. For each answer I listened to the audio once, phrase by phrase and transcribed as much as possible. I then listened to each answer a second time and reviewed the transcript to add any missing words and correct errors. The length of interviews was approximately 40 min on average and ranged from 22 minutes to over 1 hour 20 minutes.

Interview transcripts were analysed using the qualitative content analysis (QCA) approach described by Schreier (2012) to determine whether the elements of my draft evaluation framework were valid and whether there were other important aspects of engagement by decision-makers not identified. I considered QCA an appropriate method for my text-based qualitative data (interview manuscripts) given it is designed to identify key themes and how they may overlap as well as being an iterative approach allowing me to add or merge themes as analysis progressed. A coding frame was developed with higher level themes derived from the research questions and the categories within each theme developed based on the content

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of the transcripts (Appendix B). I used QSR International's NVivo 11 Software to code the interview transcripts.

The consistency of coding and the coding frame were validated and reviewed after coding five transcripts chosen to cover a broad range of responses. Three of these five were recoded and checked for mismatches. As a result a new category “processes of project team engagement” was added to the theme engagement with science/ science communication” (Appendix B) and all five transcripts recoded to reflect this change. This change was based on the observation that interviewees referred to not only their own engagement with science content and experts, but also how they saw the AdaptNRM project team attempting to engage with them (which seemed an important distinction). The validation process also showed that the coding frame covered the breadth of information coming from the interviews as a saturation point was reached with no new codes emerging and little new detail within codes after 25 interviews.

3.4 Results

In this section I will present the analysis of results from the twenty-five interviews with regional NRM decision-makers according to the key criteria from the draft evaluation framework presented in Chapter 2. I will start, however by providing background on how interviewees value science and the various means by which they access and engage with it through different forms of communication.