Book Reviews
Concept mapping for planning and evaluation
By Mary Kane and W Michael K Trochim
ISBN: 1-412940-28-1 2007 200 pages Sage, California
Reviewed by Glen Murphy
Research Fellow, Faculty of Business, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane QLD
The term concept mapping is typically associated with techniques used to identify relationships between concepts and ideas. Students in particular are encouraged to adopt this approach as a useful way to learn (and hopefully understand) their large amounts of course content. A simple Google search yields numerous tutorials and software packages suitable for this purpose. Concept Mapping however moves beyond the simple graphing of content domains and the building of basic relationship diagrams. While the fundamental aim of identifying relationships between concepts remains, Concept Mapping advocates the use of sophisticated mathematical analysis to investigate patterns in qualitative data. In doing so researchers are better able to rate the importance of various concepts, identify how participants associate concepts with each other, provide a visual or graphical representation of text-based data and develop a hierarchical structure of concepts reflecting micro clusters all the way up to macro themes. A key theme of the book is that concept mapping is best suited to applications where diverse or wide-ranging opinions need to be gathered and made sense of. Those familiar with the mathematical fundamentals of network analysis will recognise similarities in the author's treatment of concept mapping - developing similarity matrices, using multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis to interpret the data. In doing so the authors provide a number of sophisticated alternatives to the analysis and reporting of qualitative data.
Overall this is another little gem of a book in the Applied Research series by Sage publications. Keeping in line with previous Sage publications the book adopts a "no-frills" approach in both appearance and content. Over nine chapters the authors introduce the topic area, step the reader through each phase of the process and finish by considering the future of concept mapping. Separate chapters are dedicated to the applications of planning and evaluation, with examples and a description of the process followed. Unsurprisingly given the content area the authors make good use of graphs and examples of the output that you might expect at each stage of the analysis. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises designed to reinforce the content just covered. Those experienced in qualitative research will skim the first 3-4 chapters, but for those completely new to the process the authors do a good job in outlining the requirements for a useable data set. Time is spent educating the uninitiated in defining the focus of the study, choosing participants and collecting the raw data. Most individuals with an interest in this area would find adequate information in the text to plan and execute a planning or evaluation exercise using the concept mapping methodology.
The concise nature of the text does present some limitations, particularly in relation to the use of concept mapping in the context of organisational and management research. Concept Mapping sells itself as a tool-kit for those wishing to use concept mapping for planning and evaluation applications. However while the title may attract those responsible for organisational strategy and planning, the book's examples tend to reflect large scale public health projects. As a consequence the approach does seem more applicable for professional researchers engaged by large public sector organisations for specific projects. Once familiar with the topic the opportunity to use the approach in other more micro areas such as organisational change efforts, HR planning or evaluations of marketing campaigns becomes obvious. It would be useful to see more of a discussion in relation to these smaller, more focused activities and how they would assist organisational practitioners. The content of the text is also constrained in the type of data it considers. While the authors tend to focus on data collected via focus group or brainstorming sessions the same principles could be applied to the analysis of archival data such as e-mails, company reports and so on. It is felt that this area in particular would yield valuable results for organisational and management researchers.
Both authors have been at the forefront of this approach's development and have appeared to develop a successful consultancy around its execution. While this is beneficial in terms of the practical examples that are offered throughout the book, at times the authors tend to focus on their specific approach to concept mapping. The authors freely acknowledge the impracticality of carrying out the requisite analysis manually (p89). For this reason as a practitioner I feel it would have been useful to consider in more detail the software requirements of concept mapping. While others such as Andrew Smith and colleagues have developed Leximancer as a concept mapping tool little mention is made of their efforts. When discussing the future directions of concept mapping it would also may have been useful to consider the relationship between this method and other more conventional data analysis approaches and emerging fields such as network analysis.
While these observations are valid it should be noted that the book does not set itself up as the definitive word on concept mapping. Rather, it represents an excellent starting point for those wishing to begin using these techniques. Concept mapping appears to be a powerful technique for those wishing to make sense of a large, potentially diverse set of ideas or opinions. It is also useful as an approach with a high degree of face validity, particularly if your audience is one that holds misconceptions concerning the rigour of conventional qualitative research. In many ways this text best serves quantitative researchers looking to explore quantitative methods. Those already experienced in qualitative research will be able to grasp the potential of this approach and begin using it without too much effort. However those unfamiliar with statistical packages will need guidance outside the realms of the text to begin using the concept mapping approach outlined in the text.
