Qualitative Methods and Community Engagement as a Means of Understanding Social-Ecological Systems: Insights from a Flood Communication Study

The inextricable connections between humans and the rest of the natural world are often acutely felt in the face of natural hazards such as hurricanes, droughts, tsunamis, and flooding where humans not only respond to emergent situations, but their presence may affect the frequency and severity of hazards. Many federal agencies and research entities are increasingly emphasizing the important links between humans and the environment - between social and natural sciences. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has explicitly called for further integrating "social, behavioral, and economic science end-to-end in NOAA's mission and priorities" (Rouleau et al., 2016).

Aligned with NOAA's vision for social science, we explore ways of looking at social-ecological systems at the intersection of natural hazards and communication research in the specific context of a new flood warning information system. Social-ecological frameworks have a long history of seeking to make sense of individual behaviors within and influenced by external factors in a given environment or context (Stokols et al., 2013). For example, during a natural hazard event like flooding, an individual relies on not only their own knowledge and experience, but likely receives information from family and friends, from news organizations and their employer, and potentially from other community entities. Individual response to the hazard is often a result of these information inputs, implicit community norms and explicit local, regional, or national policies. To further our understanding of how these levels of the social-ecological system and flood communication intersect, we use qualitative research methodologies in a community engagement framework.

Researchers often use qualitative methods to gain deeper insight into research topics beyond what other approaches can offer (Christians, 2005; Tracy, 2013; Lune & Berg, 2017). In our project, we found qualitative methods produced insights that were numerous, novel, and nuanced in ways that quantitative research likely could not have done. Qualitative methods provided additional insight, context, and depth. This type of work also has some important tradeoffs (e.g., generalizability vs. tailored conclusions), which the increased richness in data and community connections made worthwhile for our purposes. In the session we will further discuss how researchers might consider and apply these tradeoffs in their work.

The insights we detail here are informed by an ongoing study funded by NOAA through the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology. Starting in June 2023, our team of researchers from RTI international and the University of Vermont launched an exploratory study to understand how communications about upcoming flooding filter through communities to reach their intended audiences. Specifically, we are investigating how flood information is received and shared by organizations within six communities. This initial phase of the research was exploratory, and we centered our research questions on understanding the community experience and employed qualitative methodologies, conducting 15 focus groups and 16 interviews.

This session focuses on the value of qualitative methodologies in uncovering these complexities, and we identify key strategies for fostering meaningful engagement and participation. By employing qualitative research methods within a community-engaged research approach, we have been able to capture the nuances of emergency flood information flow in a dynamic community environment. Through the recruitment and data collection phases of the qualitative portion of the study, we gathered important insights for how to engage communities in qualitative natural hazards communication research. These experiences have resulted in specific strategies for 1) community recruitment, 2) prioritizing equity, and 3) being comfortable with project pivots.

In the presentation we will detail our recommendations within each strategy and how these can apply to other natural hazards research. Some of these include having a community partner, using language to help community members understand their role in your research, and conducting site visits or having introductory conversations to build trust. When discussing equity, we share how to consider the team’s biases, plan for addressing biases throughout the project, and develop a plan for compensating community members for their time.

Using qualitative methodologies within a community-engaged research framework to explore how people communicate about flooding is just one example of the research in socio-ecological systems that is increasingly valued by decision makers. We believe that many of the practices and principles we discuss can be applied across numerous domains, and we encourage others to work with organizations like NOAA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the US Geological Survey, and their state and local counterparts to bring qualitative communication research methods to bear on decision-relevant socio-ecological problems. This work provides further justification for federal strategies to integrate social, behavioral, and economic sciences into their mission and highlights the necessity of a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to building more resilient and informed communities in the face of natural hazards. We encourage fellow interdisciplinary social and natural science teams to consider the insights we provide and document their experiences as they conduct research that is equitable, impactful, and community engaged.