| “The documentary is a vehicle to translate qualitative research to policy makers, and to the community and public.” | |
| Lisa Campbell, Duke University |
|
“We have got to talk about how to create the communities that we want. We haven’t done that. This may be a very good opportunity to start some of those conversations and realize that we have to be part of the plan to make it happen—and it is going to take our time and efforts to do that. That is probably the first and biggest step that we need to take: take responsibility.”
Lillie Chadwick Miller from the documentary, Voices of Down East
With residents divided over development that was changing the character of the rural fishing communities of Down East Carteret County along the shore of North Carolina, researchers funded by Sea Grant used social science methods to take a comprehensive snapshot of the views of residents and landowners. A documentary film was a key component of the project, which is helping the community determine how best to accommodate growth while protecting resources critical to local ecosystems, economies, and quality of life.
“Many coastal resource managers don’t know what to do with qualitative data and social science data,” says Lisa Campbell, Rachel Carson Associate Professor of Marine Affairs and Policy at Duke University and the lead researcher. “The documentary is a vehicle to translate qualitative research to policy makers, and to the community and public.”
Contentious Issues
Based at Duke’s marine lab in Beaufort, North Carolina, Campbell began reading about contentious public meetings regarding development in neighboring parts of the county.
“Before the nation’s economic downturn, new building in the area was booming,” she says. “This area has historically been made up of fishing villages with small houses and lots of waterfront access, with folks pursuing traditional livelihoods.”
Campbell says many residents were upset because land was being bought for development, and the resulting construction of larger homes and subdivisions was changing the community’s character, the resulting runoff was impacting the environment, and waterfront access was shrinking. Others saw development as bringing economic opportunity and job growth.
“Each side,” she says, “was talking about land use changes and what should be done, but there were no data to support any of the claims.”
Coincidentally, Campbell had also met University of North Carolina graduate students Carla Norwood and Gabriel Cumming, who had developed a method they had used in the mountains of North Carolina that involved collecting interview and mapping data, producing a documentary, and then presenting the documentary and information back to the community through a series of meetings.
“As researchers, we saw an opportunity to provide the community with data and information that could help them determine for themselves how to accommodate development,” Campbell says. “We would also be replicating methodologies and testing to see if they were transferable to other locations.”
Gaining Perspective
In 2008, North Carolina Sea Grant funding allowed Campbell to gather a team that included Norwood and Cumming to begin the “Change in Coastal Communities: Perspectives from Down East” study to gauge public opinion on the pace of development in the region, trends in land ownership, and attitudes concerning the area’s natural and cultural resources.
Phase one of the project was collecting survey data, says Cumming, who is now a postdoctoral associate at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
During the summer of 2008 and spring of 2009, opinion surveys were administered to a random sample of 20 percent of the region’s population, including full-time residents, part-time residents, and nonresident property owners.
The response rate was high, Cumming says, with 51 percent of those who received survey questionnaires returning them.
Building Trust
Over the spring and summer of 2009, the research team conducted phase two of the project, which included videotaping interviews with 70 Down East stakeholders who offered a wide range of perspectives. Those interviews were then used to create a 30-minute documentary film.
“The interviews were analyzed, coded, and the data categorized to tell the story as it was told to us by the participants,” Cumming says. “The documentary makes it clear that we’re taking the community’s input seriously. It builds trust, and in my experience you can’t do too much trust building.”
“One of the important indicators of the documentary’s success to me,” says Campbell, “is that the community felt that the issues were presented fairly.”
Information Sharing
Phase three of the project was a series of public meetings where the survey results and the documentary film were presented to local stakeholders.
Small-group discussions following the video presentations gave participants an opportunity to share their own visions for the area, Campbell says.
Participants’ visions from the meetings were then compiled and ranked. At a follow-up meeting, participants identified priority issues from the ranked vision list and discussed how those issues could be tackled.
The resulting project information has been used by the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center to leverage additional funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the North Carolina Rural Center for a regional economic development and resource management initiative.
Meaningful Dialogue
Having proved that the social science methods work with diverse communities, the researchers say coastal resource managers could collaborate with researchers to do similar projects.
“This methodology should be used in situations when the management agency has an interest in better understanding what stakeholders views are on an issue,” Cumming says. “It’s not suited to a situation where managers have already developed a policy that they are trying to implement.”
He adds, “This methodology is capable of fostering a civil, inclusive dialogue in situations where that hasn’t been the norm. It fosters real, meaningful dialogue where new insights and ideas can emerge for everyone involved.”
For more information about the Down East project or to view the Voices of Down East documentary, go to www.ml.duke.edu/coastalcommunities/. You may also contact Lisa Campbell at (252) 504-7628 or lcampbe@duke.edu, or Gabriel Cumming at (919) 681-8163 or gbc@duke.edu.
