This 15-minute film captures a conversation between the users of two social science research methods, surveys and citizens’ juries. The conversation was captured at the end of a session at the fifth Scottish Graduate School of Social Science Summer School in which Andrew Thompson and Jen Roberts drew on their experience of working together in a project that combined these methods to research attitudes to wind farms in Scotland. They describe some of the strengths and limitations of the respective approaches and consider how combining them has the potential to be complementary, despite the different epistemological bases of the two methods. Surveys are generally administered to individuals whereas citizens’ juries are necessarily deliberative, and drawing on the effects on individual members of discussions among the group, but the conversation raises a range of issues that force us to think about the status of each method as well as what happens when they are combined. The film also includes a contribution from the audience at the event.

Academics in conversation: Dr Jen Roberts, University of Strathclyde, and Professor Andrew Thompson, University of Edinburgh.