4 Approach
Three focus group meetings were undertaken for landholders, in Waikato (Matamata), Bay of Plenty (Edgecumbe) and Canterbury (Irwell). Regional council staff in each of these areas were interviewed regarding plan status. Other stakeholders with an interest in water were covered by individual interviews rather than focus groups because it was considered that their issues would be sufficiently different from those of other extractors that combining them would be counter-productive.
The focus group meetings and interviews had two objectives. They aimed to:
- identify the beliefs of the groups about the nature of the impacts on water quality of their current land use and management programme
- identify the nature of their beliefs regarding their right to undertake their current land use and management programme
- identify their beliefs about their rights to change land use and management
- identify the way in which those beliefs affect behaviour in relation to the resource.
The aim of the meetings and interviews was to understand the situation as reported by participants. There may therefore be some reporting bias associated with the results to the extent that this was not able to be isolated by questioning. Responses were not validated through any other formal means.
The focus group meetings were undertaken in a structured way, with introductions, general discussion and small group consideration of scenarios. A template for the focus group meetings and the questions worked through with the small groups is shown in Annex 1 below. Each focus group had 9-12 participants. Individual interviews followed a semi structured format, with questions tailored to the circumstances of the interviewee.
