A case study on the methodological measurability of integrational project’s success

• Název práce v češtině: A case study on the methodological measurability of integrational project’s success
• Název v anglickém jazyce: A case study on the methodological measurability of integrational project’s success
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Sustainability; Social Sustainability; Integration; Social Integration; Subjectivity; FtFInteraction; Measurability; Political Correctness
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2016/2017
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Katedra sociologie (23-KS)
• Vedoucí / školitel: doc. Mgr. Martin Hájek, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno vedoucím/školitelem
• Datum přihlášení: 07.06.2017
• Datum zadání: 07.06.2017
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 18.06.2018 13:00
• Místo konání obhajoby: Jinonice - U Kříže 8, Praha 5, J3018, Jinonice - místn. č. 3018
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 03.05.2018
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 18.06.2018
• Oponenti: Mgr. Karel Čada, Ph.D.

Předběžná náplň práce v anglickém jazyce

Social Sustainability
A case study on the methodological measurability of integrational project’s success

Introduction / Background
The fundamental idea for the Master thesis arose early, a topic so omnipresent people may already have taken the approaches to the resolution of the issue for granted; Integration. Having a strong interest in languages and the herewith following power of language, the first approach was to perform an analysis on the topic’s presence in media with focus on metaphors and other linguistic tools impacting the perception of migrants by media’s sheer existence. Preliminary research showed an already substantial collection of material is existing such as “At War with Metaphor” , which would make a thesis on current events just another contribution, regardless, highly relevant.
Instead of “only” contributing to existing research, I aimed at representing my own firm belief of issues being at least two-sided and needing rethinking as so many topics, which we currently experience with the damage control of the climate. The aim is therefore, to present an alternative combination of existing methodologies, with additions, to, from a social perspective, perform prevention rather than fixing. This requires social innovation to create new functioning products, one of which I attempt to call social sustainability. The focus lies on long-term investments above the immediate effects of integration, where face to face interaction eventually is unavoidable. With an experiment, allowing face to face interaction, the methodology being presented will determine the relevance of such interaction in comparison to myths and prejudices such as they are created by media and specific language usage. The term of social sustainability optimally will become a part in the future language and aid in the general perception of integration to be more effective.
The general intended connotation associated to social sustainability is the freedom for creation without limitation of variation. Meaning, that several approaches in combination only, can lead to success and people living together in the future. The aim then is to develop a tool for people to overcome differences from within and hereby influence the voice of the media as they are able to devalue any media content with their personal experience and knowledge. The requirements for overcoming these challenges are to establish mutual respect and understanding for one another and generally an attenuation of the fear for the other. In this sense, Integration is not just an economic necessity but a social process in which each and every personal concern may cause disruption and therefore has to be regarded, as well as positivity is to be encouraged.
On these terms, it is equally important to approach integration from both sides. It is not only the migrants who need to integrate and be ready for change, this is not sustainable and does not work on a big scale as to some extent the existence of ghettos proves. People who individually might have tried but did not succeed sought shelter in familiarity and eventually ended up in neighbourhoods with a dense population characterized by nationality or other shared values. Integration also means change and openness from the counterpart. Therefore, this research will mostly focus on the counterpart of the migrants and seek to understand their approach and awareness what their duties are in terms of integration. To back up the abovementioned thoughts a set of theories will be introduced in order to scientifically underline the findings’ value and validity. These theories will be chosen in the process of the research as its outcome and direction yet is too unstable to make an appropriate choice. However, it is important to note that the projects core lies in the development of a methodology, sufficiently complex to grasp the issue.
Finally, to allocate the topic and potential concept of social sustainability, the factor of interaction, hence the face to face, was chosen. The other factors are culture and laws, which are both reciprocally depending and influencing and therefore, cannot be completely separated. Either way, the main focus will be on the interactional factor. The importance of this factor is also represented in the presented preliminary hypothesis and research question.
RQ and Hypothesis
With the described goal to measure the importance of personal meeting in integrational settings, the aim in this relation is the creation of a tool to measure the value of interaction. Accordingly, the following research question is raised:
“How can the influence of direct meetings/projects with integrational purposes be determined and measured to identify the host’s subjective perception of the other before and after?”
In close relation, to this question, guiding the research’s tendencies, stands the Hypothesis, which shall serve as the fundamental assumption for the creation of the ideology of social sustainability with the in the following introduced tool to confirm its validity:
“Intersubjectivity as a phenomenon becomes apparent in Personal Interaction (face to face), which allows for the reciprocal exchange of perspectives to alter integration as simultaneously, to cope with the other on the basis of personal experience and creation of shared values and understanding on common ground.”
Data Collection
The data collection will take place in the beginning of 2018 in close cooperation with Brandbjerg Højskole and the Redcross asylumcenter in Jelling, Denmark. Brandbjerg is a specific school referred to as Folk Highschool, which is an addition to the schooling system in Scandinavia. The original idea came from Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig and has the aim to provide young adults with an opportunity to explore and challenge themselves in a non-formal environment. It functions as a boarding school and the schools are generally well integrated in the local areas. So is the case with Brandbjerg. They have for example several cooperations with the nearby asylumcenter and organised numerous projects, especially together with one of their subject lines called Eventlab.
Eventlab is a class that encourages entrepreneurship and allows students to practically test their entrepreneurial and leadership skills. The students are usually no younger than 18 and up to 25, where they mostly consist of Danes from all over the country and different social backgrounds and a small percentage of internationals. It hereby makes a perfect target group, as the young students are engaged and willing to participate in the organisation as well as completion of projects, as which I will disguise the research. It is not to pretend them organising some different project, but the main focus will be slightly moved for them, in relation to what it is for the research paper, in order to minimise the Hawthorne effect. The interviews will be held with an experimental and a control group, which also are organisers of the project. There will be three sets of interviews of which some are separate and some together. In addition to the interviews, observations will be summarised for a better insight to the individuals’ attitudes during the interviews and the meeting with the asylum seekers.
In addition, a trial run will be performed in 2017 to test the methods explained in the following, before performing the actual experiment, as it is a unique opportunity with only one option to do the data collection as otherwise a new school term has to be awaited in order for having uninfluenced samples. This is the primary data to which a selection of relevant secondary data will be added to gain a complete and thorough insight to the complex topic of integration and subjectivity.
Secondary Data
As additional literature to throw a different light on the subject, several texts evolving around migrants and integration will be taken into consideration. The focus within the topic will then lie on the face to face interaction and how previous research has established or denied the relevance of direct interaction.
Furthermore, the previous existence of the term social sustainability will be investigated. It is said to be the least developed and accepted spectrum within the concept of sustainability, where the economic and environmental have gotten a strong position in discourse, the social sustainability has not yet established itself. Social sustainability as a term in itself may appear frequently in scholarly papers and politics, however, it is more for the connotations of the word sustainability rather than the concept. One concept, is on the basis of needs and work where social sustainability as a concept serves to meet these needs and reflect the basic exchange process between society and nature.
The specific issue of integration is therefore, strongly considered as a main factor to contribute to the understanding of social sustainability, which ultimately contains all aspects of interaction in social space to be improved for a better community.
The preliminary collection of literature will be presented in form of a bibliography in the end of the project.
Methodology
The methodological experiment will in this paper be the core as it serves to measure the impact of face to face interaction and hereby will aid to determine, whether integrational projects are successful. The fundamental outline of how the research is conducted is taken from the Q-methodology developed by William Stephenson. It is an approach better known from the field of psychology as Stephenson was a psychologist. Lately, however, Q has been adopted by sociology and a few researches have been experimenting with this methodology to measure subjectivity.
The subjectivity is measured in terms of pinpointing correlations between subjects across a sample of variables. This then allows for the individual viewpoints on subjects to be narrowed down to a few factors, which indicate shared ways of thinking, hence a common value system. It has its name from the factor analysis in which Q stands as the opposition of the R method, in which correlations of variables in a sample of subjects are defined.
The basic idea of the Q-methodology in Sociology, is to measure subjectivity. This is achieved by a primary collection of statements obtained through interviews. The statements are then collected and processed in order to be presented to a sample. The individuals have to express their position, opinion or feeling in accordance to the statement. This test is done two times with different statements with the same coding scheme, hence an equal message in different wording, in order for the individuals to answer subjectively. With the statements, having the same fundamental messages or topics but being phrased differently no feeling of repetition and no direct urge for corrective behaviour arises, which enlarges the opportunity to grasp actual subjectivity. In this research, the Q-methodology is used for the structure of 3 interviews. Additionally, different approaches are performed during the 3 interviews accordingly.
Visual Scheme of project




1st Interview
The above scheme, explains the planned proceeding of the project, where the first interview will be held with the experimental group in form of a focus group. The focus group is used to allow the individuals to freely share their viewpoints under a supervision guiding the samples through the topics they shall cover. The output of the focus group are statements, which then will be used throughout the further proceedings of the project. Additionally, the individuals get to play a dice game with dices representing topics collected from the secondary empirical data, to create narratives, which then can be compared with the narratives after the face to face interaction with the asylum seekers. The first interview for the organisational group takes place in the following where the samples already are presented the statements obtained from the focus group as well as artificially created statements, based on the secondary literature.
Project
After the first round of interviews the actual integrational project takes place, where a general introduction will be held to the project the organisational group chooses to organise. The following steps will be games, ice-breakers such as “the bigger the better” (trading of paperclips), “fear in a hat” (anonymous discussions of fears) and “fabulous flag” (drawing of a representing flag). The purpose of these games is to natural start conversations amongst each other and be exposed to a variation of perspectives and perception, with which they have to cope with throughout the games. Finally, the project will end with an informal coffee and cake mingle where the individuals will be observed in a non-guided free environment. The aim is here to see how the individuals choose to continue or stop the interaction with the newly met people.

2nd Interview
The second interview will be held with both groups together as it only requires them to take position to the previously created statements from the focus group and literature. This will be the first time for the experimental group and the second for the organisational group, which then serves as a proof of how their attitudes have changed. Furthermore, it is testing the functionality of the methodology, as the reactions to the statements in the second interview can be compared to define tendencies with a group that has done the test before and a group that did not, however was influential in the creation of the statements.
3rd Interview
The final interviews will be held separately again and serve as an evaluation of the projects effectivity. Here the participants should have the attention on the evaluation of the project itself rather than its impact. This will aid in receiving subjective and less influenced answers. Part of the interviews, will be the dice game for creating narratives and semantic differential. Here the participants have to choose side on some statements which eventually will express their attitude they obtained after attending the integrational project. The results will then again be subject to comparison both to previous results and within the two groups.

Expected Results
The expected results of the project, are to create a functioning methodology able to measure subjectivity in a valid form and hereby, answer the research question. The goal is to proof the impact of face to face interaction, which then ads validity and importance to the term of social sustainability. This addition, shall ultimately aid in altering the focus on social sustainability and give it foundation and awareness, to enter the discourse of sustainability on the same level as economic and environmental sustainability. It is expected, that the project does have an impact on the participants and their attitudes will change and form a gap between the preconceived reality regarding migrants, and hereby integration, and the actual knowledge obtained after their personal interaction.

 
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