Severn River Catchment Group Mental Model Workflow

Severn River Catchment Group Mental Model Workflow presented in Januchowski-Hartley, S.R., Thomas, M., Bristol, R., and Mills, M. (in review). When unlocking rivers results in building more infrastructure: a group mental model shares lessons from weir remediation in the United Kingdom. Conservation Science and Practice. This video visualises how the research team and 11 people, those actively engaged in weir remediation projects in the Severn River Catchment, generated a group mental model of weir remediation processes in the catchment. A model template was designed by the research team as a way to capture perspectives and to visualize an individual mental model during each interview. The initial template was designed in relation to the questions asked by the research team in the interviews and included boxes to capture people's perspectives on broader social and environmental context, characteristics of stuctures, sites, and people in weir remediation, project processes, costs and benefits of remediation actions, uncertainties, and other perspectives such as areas for improvement, that influence weir remediation. The group model underwent substantial iterations as responses from 11 interviews were analysed sequentially, and new perceptions shared by each person were integrated into the mental model even if in disagreement with previous responses. Once a draft group mental model was agreed by the research team it was distributed by email to the 11 people interviewed for the study. Comments and feedback were integrated from the group and the group mental model underwent several more iterations. The most recent version of the group mental model is presented here.