Arthur Cordell wrote,
> Tom, each of your insights has a number: what about the others...I
>only see 3 or so of these one-liners.
>
There are 54 of the statements in total. Most of them are one-liners but a
few are two-liners. They are part of a research project I'm doing for the
Institute for Humanities at SFU. I sent four of the numbered statements "in
media res" to futurework to see if I could provoke someone into asking the
question you asked. ;-)
Well, since you asked . . .
I've selected the 54 statements from a collection of over 260 statements
found in published articles and editorials, dealing with the distribution of
work, working time and income. I've tried to balance the sample so that it
fairly represents the current state of the debate.
Now comes the fun part. The statements have been printed on separate cards
and I ask participants in the study to sort the cards into 11 piles, ranging
from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The record of each participant's
sort is entered into a computer and correlated with the sorts of all other
participants to identify common factors that characterize distinctive points
of view. The procedure is called "Q methodology".
About half of the participants in the study will be opinion leaders. That
is, people who have written published articles or reports on labour force
issues, who have appeared on radio or television or who hold influential
positions in organizations dealing with the issues (e.g., unions, HRDC,
etc.). The other half will be ordinary folks. At the end of the process,
hopefully, we'll have an "opinion map" of the issues and an engaging set of
educational materials useful for initiating and guiding discussion.
Arthur, if you'd be interested in trying an email version of the sorting,
I'd be delighted to include you in the survey (I have a procedure for
administering an email sort outlined in my head). The invitation is also
open to other interested futurework subscribers.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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