Imagine going about your day, when a researcher approaches and asks if they can ask you a few questions about your life. You agree. However, the questions aren’t quite what you were expecting.
“Have you had a child die? Or have you lost a family member in traumatic circumstances?” “Have you ever done something illegal?” “Have you ever lost livestock to predators?”
Perhaps you feel a bit affronted at being asked these questions, or you don’t feel like answering. Perhaps you have complex feelings such as distress, shame or grief associated with your ‘true’ answer. You might be worried about the consequences of sharing information and try to avoid further questions or potential repercussions by evading the question. Or perhaps you tell the researcher what you think they want to hear, so that they will leave you alone sooner.
These are all examples of questions asked by conservationists interested in understanding human behaviour. Child mortality is often used as a measure of household poverty; there is an increased interest in understanding people’s compliance with conservation rules, meanwhile extreme climatic events and interactions between wildlife and people are increasing, sometimes resulting in the loss of livelihoods, property and even life.
Failing to consider how questions make people feel can affect participants negatively and cause psychological distress. In turn, such a lack of consideration can raise ethical questions, result in poor quality data, and harm both the research process and the success of conservation outcomes. It is therefore important that as conservationists we first consider whether such questions are necessary to ask, we ensure our questions are appropriately phrased, and we consider how asking these questions may affect participants.
So, what makes a topic sensitive?
Social scientists recognise that while any topic has the potential to become sensitive, some are more likely than others, particularly if they present some kind of threat to participants. For example, if topics ask about breaking of rules, people may fear legal or social repercussions, or if providing information potentially impinges on the interests of powerful elites, people may have concerns about their safety. In many contexts, discussing logging, mining or land ownership can be risky. Alternatively, topics that include deeply personal experiences, such as violence, loss of life or property, may be sensitive because they evoke strong emotional responses. Finally, some topics may be sacred and simply not discussable with strangers.
To be safe, we may err on the side of caution, and assume a topic is sensitive. In recent years, this has led to an increase in the use of specialised questioning techniques in conservation. While these methods may offer participants more protection, they may also mean that we use more complex methods than necessary. Yet, there is relatively little guidance for formally assessing sensitivity in advance of asking questions. Recognising the need for guidance in this area, we, members of the Conservation and Human Behaviour Research Group based at Bangor University (UK), wanted to develop and test tools to help researchers assess topic sensitivity.
To do so, we used a case study of rule breaking around protected areas and assessed several different approaches. First, we developed five questions that could be asked of individuals about specific behaviours. These questions aimed to capture information about things such as prevailing social norms, personal morals as well as general comfort discussing specific topics. For example, we asked individuals whether they thought specific behaviours were ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and whether important people in their lives, such as their friends and family, would approve of these behaviours. We then combined answers from these questions to create a Sensitivity Index for each behaviour, where higher scores represented more sensitive topics.
We also developed two group exercises. The first involved asking groups of people to list all the reasons they went to protected areas, and all the challenges they faced from living alongside them. Here, we wanted to generate discussion to see whether people mentioned forbidden activities of their own accord, and to assess any costs of living alongside protected areas. The second group exercise consisted of a pilesort: here participants were provided with cards showing a range of different livelihood activities (including some prohibited ones, such as killing certain wildlife species). Collectively, groups were asked to discuss each card and sort them into piles depending on how willing they thought people in their community would be to discuss the topic.
We tested these methods in two locations: the Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra, Indonesia, and the Ruaha-Rungwa ecosystem in central-southern Tanzania. Both landscapes are of global importance for biodiversity. Gunung Leuser is the last place on Earth where Sumatran rhinos, elephants, tigers and orangutans coexist. Ruaha-Rungwa is home to some of the largest remaining populations of carnivores found in Africa, including lions, leopards and hunting dogs. Each landscape comprises multiple protected areas, each with different regulations. Importantly, both landscapes are culturally diverse and are home to thousands of people, many of whom use natural resources from within the protected areas to support their households.
What did we find?
Overall, we found topics to be much more sensitive in Tanzania than Indonesia. All four behaviours investigated using our Sensitivity Index in Tanzania (hunting wildlife, grazing livestock, eating bushmeat and entering the protected area without a permit) were considered more sensitive than the most sensitive behaviour, logging, in Indonesia. Similarly, the pile-sort revealed that groups in Tanzania categorised a higher proportion of topics as very sensitive or sensitive, compared to groups in Indonesia.
Varying perceptions of sensitivity could be attributed to several factors including differences in legislation, communities’ awareness of laws, their experiences of law enforcement, as well as varying cultural perspectives and norms regarding these behaviours. For example, in general, knowledge of conservation rules was higher amongst participants in Tanzania than Indonesia.
During group exercises, Tanzanian participants often cited laws that outlined how all wild life belongs to the state and described rules which prohibit entering National Parks or Game Reserves for any reason. They also believed that if they did so, it was highly likely they would incur sanctions. For example, one participant outlined that if they killed elephants for their ivory they would “stay in jail until the bars broke”. In other groups, sensitivity became apparent through silence. For example, participants were reticent to engage in the exercise, looked uncomfortable, or cautioned others from speaking.
In Indonesia, rules were generally not as well known, but talking about activities that were known to be prohibited was generally considered sensitive. Interestingly, in Indonesia, some behaviours which were illegal (e.g., hunting sambar (Rusa unicolor)) were openly discussed, possibly because of poor knowledge of rules, but also perhaps because low levels of enforcement meant participants associated less risk with discussing the behaviour.
Importantly, participants in Tanzania reported various challenges with living alongside protected areas, which might explain some of why people there may find it difficult to discuss topics such as hunting wildlife openly. For example, communities living near Game Reserves reported more challenges coexisting alongside wildlife, with crop damage, livestock depredation and human fatalities listed. Discussions often became emotive, with participants describing the grief, trauma and anxiety theyexperienced from living alongside large and dangerous species.
In contrast, participants near Ruaha National Park focussed more on how the park was managed, including negative interactions with park rangers and uncertainty associated with changes to the park boundary. Such topics were sensitive because participants were suspicious of our research motives, and conservation actors more broadly. While participants in Indonesia also reported challenges associated with living alongside wildlife and protected areas, these were not reported as often by participants, and conversations did not evoke such strong emotional responses. While this may reflect cultural differences in how emotion is portrayed, it may also be an artefact of our sampling strategy and unequal coverage across the landscape.
Which method worked best?
It depends on what you want to learn! All three of the methods that we tried elicited useful information, but the type of information differed. The Sensitivity Index provided a quantitative assessment per person for specific behaviours. While this data can be modelled against predictors, and direct comparisons can be made across behaviours and study sites, it requires larger sample sizes (>200) than group exercises and doesn’t reveal why specific topics are sensitive. In contrast, the group exercises are more flexible, require fewer participants and provide much richer insights about what people think.
Importantly, who asks questions really matters. When we enter communities as researchers, people often have preconceptions about who we are, what we want and the power we hold. These ideas can influence their willingness both to engage in research, but also to share information. Equally, we also have our own preconceptions about how topics will be construed, and why. As individuals we belong to and identify with a range of different groups (e.g., depending on our gender, age, class, religion, ethnicity, nationality, etc), and our experiences in these groups inform our norms and values, and therefore our conceptualisations of sensitivity.
To recognise these biases, it is important to take a step back and critically assess our own assumptions, to inwardly reflect on our own identity, and to assess how these factors may affect the research process and outcomes. Known as reflexivity, this process is increasingly promoted in conservation, alongside practices that require researchers to consider their positionality, and the power-relations between themselves and participants.
Perhaps your next piece of research will focus on understanding what people do, and why. It may involve some topics that you think could be perceived as sensitive. What should you do? First, make sure you include enough time and money in your research project so that you can spend time in the research context first, learn what people think and feel about different topics. Not only will this help you to decide which methods to use, but it will also help to identify any specific ethical issues and risks that may emerge. Also spend time thinking carefully about who is most appropriate to collect the data, is it you? Or might someone else be better placed? Doing so could help produce more informed, more accountable and more accurate findings. To this end, we encourage others to engage with the tools we developed and tested when making decisions about how to research potentially sensitive topics.
Further Reading
Ibbett, H., J. P. G. Jones, L. Dorward, E. M.Kohi, A. A. Dwiyahreni, K. Prayitno, S.Sankeni et al. 2023. A mixed methods approach for measuring topic sensitivity in conservation. People and Nature 5(4): 1245–1261. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10501.
