Integrative complexity of wildfire management: development of a scale

Abstract

Wildfire in the West has become a controversial natural resource issue that has divided the public's perceptions regarding its management, and forest managers are now faced with the difficult task of making sound decisions while balancing these varying concerns. Two widely used wildfi re management practices are prescribed fire and mechanical thinning. In order to better understand the public's position regarding these two techniques, we have drawn upon the concept of integrative complexity, which is defined as a protocol for measuring the complex way that people think about issues. This paper presents the psychometric process by which a combination open-ended and fixed-item scale was developed to measure complexity of thought that is consistent with integrative complexity. The resulting scale is designed for use in large surveys across any number of natural resource issues, thus allowing the information generated to be generalizeable to broader populations, which is often impractical with this originally qualitative research method.

Parent Publication

• Proceedings of the 2006 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium

Citation

Carroll, Joshua; Bright, Alan. 2007. Integrative complexity of wildfire management: development of a scale. In: Burns, R.; Robinson, K., comps. Proceedings of the 2006 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium; 2006 April 9-11; Bolton Landing, NY. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-P-14. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station: 574-582.