Revealing research preferences 407


TABLE 1 Complementary pairs and their descriptions based on the validated questionnaire exploring research preferences in conservation science.


Impact driven


This approach to research is driven by a desire to achieve impact or conservation outcomes & the belief that conservation research should always mobilize action. Local specifics perspective


This perspective finds the details of specific research sites more interesting than general trends. Autonomous idealist


This approach to research is likely to be independent from collaborators with opposing perspectives, as these are thought to compromise efficiency & integrity of research. Human-focused research


This approach to research is primarily interested in the dynamics of humans & their institutions. Relativist


This worldview sees reality as something that is constructed in the minds of individual humans & is unique to each. Nature & society separation


This worldview sees nature as clearly distinct from society & considers it appropriate to study natural & social systems as independent entities.


option to answer ‘neither’, but because only nine people chose this option, these were coded as missing for the analyses. We used a one-way analysis of variance with boot- strapping (with 1,000 resamples). As the data were non- normal, bootstrapping was used for the parametric tests. In cases where significant difference was identified, we ran post-hoc tests with Hochberg’sGT2 because of the differ- ence in sample sizes between the groups.


Results


The questionnaire received 204 responses that were suffi- ciently complete to be included in the analysis. This in- cluded 178 responses from the 349 conference participants invited (a response rate of 51%), and 26 from wider advertising.


Factor analysis


The factor analysis produced a statistically grounded factor solution of six factors, each representing a different research preference. These factors each contained three variables, except for one that had four, for a total of 19 variables (Supplementary Table 1). This provided the basis of the va- lidated questionnaire, with 19 questions corresponding to six research preferences reflecting different philosophies, methods and values. For questionnaire respondents, a high score in relation to a given factor indicated a tendency towards a given research preference (left-hand column of Table 1), with the right-hand column being a


Non-impact driven


This approach to research is not concerned with achieving conservation impact or outcomes, & may be motivated by many other factors such as curiosity or professional success. General trends perspective


This perspective is more interested in broad scale processes & synthesis research than what happens in particular cases. Pragmatic collaborator


This approach to research is likely to be collaborative, & will in- volve work with stakeholders, even those that the researcher dis- agrees with.


Nature-focused research


This approach to research is primarily interested in the dynamics of animals, plants & their ecosystems. Realist


This worldview considers that there is only one reality, which can be directly studied & known through research. Nature–society hybridity


This worldview sees nature & society as hybrid entities made up of both human & non-human elements that can never be truly separated.


complementary alternative. Although in some cases the complementary alternative was self-evident, for example the distinction between realism and relativism, in others the complementary alternative could only be recognized for what it was not, such as the extent that research is impact- or outcome-driven. The characteristics of each fac- tor were developed by giving them short descriptions to aid the presentation and interpretation of results. These de- scriptions were derived from key words in the validated list of questions, as well as interpretation of the meaning of each factor by the research team. Although the language of the questions could have been interpreted in different ways by different respondents, the statistical analysis of the 204 respondents ensured that the questions and subse- quent factors were clustered in a way that was consistently meaningful to these respondents and showed sufficient within-factor variation to be suitable markers of distinction between them. We developed a spider diagram for visual display of the six factors (Fig. 1), and a proposed workshop structure for a group activity and a printable version of the self-score questionnaire (Supplementary Materials 1 & 2, respectively).


Demographic analysis


Of the 204 respondents 191 provided demographic data that could be used for a comparative analysis between those that self-identified as a natural scientist, social scientist or both (Supplementary Table 2). Each of these groups showed wide variability in their responses for each of the six factors (Fig. 1). When responses from these groups were compared


Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 404–411 © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S003060531900067X


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