By Robinson Low and Darby Swayne, graduate students at UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs
Catalyzing Innovation in Stormwater Solutions
The iconic rain of the Puget Sound region creates problems when it hits the streets and other impervious surfaces that characterize this highly developed urban landscape. The resulting stormwater runoff carries toxic contaminants into nearby waterways, degrades habitat and water quality, and causes flooding, touching nearly all facets of the coupled human and natural system.
In 2019, the Water 100 Project kicked off an effort to identify, assess, fund, and implement the 100 most substantive solutions for improving system conditions, benefiting humans and nature in ways that extend well beyond stormwater pollution. Researchers at the University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy are taking this work a step further, exploring innovative tools to galvanize high-impact stormwater solutions and address prioritization challenges including project placement, equitable impacts, and limited data availability.
This article is the third installment in a three-part series describing the methodologies utilized by three UW research teams and their thoughts on how these tools might benefit future conservation work.
The Q-Methodology
Stormwater management is the effort and actions taken by municipalities to reduce runoff of rainwater or melted snow into streets, lawns, and other sites along with water quality improvement. In most cities, stormwater management is complicated by varied weather patterns, population demographics, contaminants, existing infrastructure, constrained funds, and civilian attitudes. Stormwater is responsible for trillions of liters of water polluted by thousands of chemicals that disproportionately affect people of color and overburdened communities. To address these challenges, decision-makers must weigh the different inputs and outcomes related to stormwater solutions to make informed decisions about implementing greening measures like tree plantings, rain gardens, and other green stormwater infrastructure. A team of researchers at the University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy wanted to understand how Puget Sound communities talk about stormwater along with the application, efficacy, and feasibility of different stormwater solutions. To do this, the team used a research tool known as Q-methodology which is a study of participant viewpoints and attempts to elicit dominant attitudes on an issue by having participants sort and rank a set of statements.
What research tool was utilized or developed?
Q-Methodology brings together qualitative and quantitative techniques to understand the different viewpoints and perspectives within a group. In this instance, Q-Methodology was used to explore differing perspectives on stormwater management, reveal consensus and divergence in viewpoints on solutions and their implementations, and begin prioritizing projects. This is accomplished through a four-step process to produce discourses, a shared narrative about how individuals view or form conceptions of the world.
Rank Ordering: The researcher creates a “Q-set” or list of statements that show various perspectives about stormwater. Participants engage in discussion during a recorded interview, then sort the Q-Set according to their perspective. To sort the Q-Set, the participants are tasked with ordering the statements into pre-set boxes (see Figure 1) from lower priority to higher priority.
Factor Analysis: Using the rank ordering from participants, the researcher conducts quantitative factor analysis. This helps streamline the data and creates idealized Q-Sorts for each group of individuals.
Discourse Analysis: The researcher conducts quantitative and qualitative interpretations. This includes comparing participants within each conversation, the idealized composite Q-Sorts for each discourse, and Z-scores for each statement. These efforts – in concert with keywords, quotes, and reactions pulled from the interviews – result in a deeper understanding and ability to explain the shared viewpoints of the discourses.
Blank Q-Board we used in our study. Participants sorted statements into boxes until the entire board was filled.
To understand community perspectives on stormwater management, the team developed a Q-Set of 29 solutions from the Water 100 Project which fell into three categories: green infrastructure, gray infrastructure, and source control categories. For instance, how would experts rank tree planting (green infrastructure), permeable pavement (gray infrastructure), and increase manure control and nutrient management (source control) against each other? How did their rankings compare with other experts? Q-Methodology exposed themes about which categories of solutions are considered a higher priority by communities and how that prioritization differs between groups.
How could the tool be applied? How might it benefit conservation work elsewhere?
The Q-Methodology is widely applicable because of the ability to create a Q-Set for any topic, issue, or question. Most studies that use Q-Methodology have relatively small sample sizes (as low as 20 to 60 participants) compared to other data-gathering techniques. In future studies, this Q-Set could be altered to include or exclude stormwater solutions relative to the Water 100 list. This study focused on stormwater solutions within the Puget Sound region, but the same methodology could be applied to another region. Another research team could use Q-Methodology to tackle an entirely different issue such as air quality or climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives. Q-Methodology has strong potential in future studies and workshops as an entry point for discussion and as a qualitative x quantitative tool to enable decision-making, especially in complex dialogues with widely variable perspectives.
Where can additional information about the tool be found?
The Q-Methodology was developed in 1935 by Dr. William Stephenson to objectively measure and quantify human subjectivity toward a topic, issue, or question. His work titled “The study of behavior; Q-technique and its methodology” (1953) was the defining piece outlining Q-Methodology’s use. Originally, it was predominantly used in psychology and social sciences but has seen recent use in stormwater governance and for other environmental resource management-related issues. While Q-Methodology is often employed in-person with notecards, our research group (and many others) utilized the online Q-Method Software tool to create sorts and analyze results remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Connect with Robinson Low or Darby Swayne for further information about this work.
Featured image: Downspout discharge. © Michael B. Maine/TNC
