Publications by Colleges and Departments (MSU - Bozeman)
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Item Narratives and the Policy Process: Applications of the Narrative Policy Framework(Montana State University Library, 2022) Jones, Michael D.; McBeth, Mark K.; Shanahan, Elizabeth A.A long history of literature describes how stories are central to how humans understand and communicate about the world around them. The NPF applies these discoveries to the policy process, whereby narratives are meaning-making tools used to capture attention and influence policy outcomes. Conceived at the Portneuf School of Narrative in the early part of the century and formally named in 2010, the Narrative Policy Framework’s (NPF) initial purpose was to scientifically understand the relationship between narratives and the policy process. Since its seminal naming, the NPF’s charter has expanded to non-scientific approaches (Gray & Jones, 2015; Jones and Radaelli, 2015), to science and policy communication, as well as proclaiming normative commitments to both science and democracy. Recently, guideline publications have also been produced that provide detailed instructions about how to conduct NPF research. Along the way several summary pieces have chronicled the NPF’s development. Two of these NPF assessments were part of larger collections of NPF studies, including the 2014 edited volume The Science of Stories and a special NPF symposium issue featured in the Policy Studies Journal. On par with NPF collections emerging every four years, here we offer a third collection of NPF studies that represent some of the best NPF studies to date.Item Narratives and the Policy Process: Applications of the Narrative Policy Framework. Chapter 10: Innovations and Future Directions for the Narrative Policy Framework(Pressbooks, 2022) Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; McBeth, Mark K.; Jones, Michael D.The NPF started as an iterative scientific journey exploring whether narratives play a role in the policy process. Because we were prepared to be wrong—even warned and such—we never would have predicted what the next fifteen years would yield. Yet, two things happened. First, our results held over time, indicating that narratives could be systematically and thus reliably studied as a critical mechanism of policy change. Second, scholarly interest in the NPF exploded. Thus, with the NPF’s seminal naming, subsequent articles, and the first edited volume, we set out to create a comprehensive framework for the study of narratives in the policy process.Item Narratives and the Policy Process: Applications of the Narrative Policy Framework. Chapter 1: A Brief Introduction to the Narrative Policy Framework(Pressbooks, 2022) Jones, Michael D.; McBeth, Mark K.; Shanahan, Elizabeth A.A long history of literature describes how stories are central to how humans understand and communicate about the world around them. The NPF applies these discoveries to the policy process, whereby narratives are meaning-making tools used to capture attention and influence policy outcomes. Conceived at the Portneuf School of Narrative in the early part of the century and formally named in 2010, the Narrative Policy Framework’s (NPF) initial purpose was to scientifically understand the relationship between narratives and the policy process. Since its seminal naming, the NPF’s charter has expanded to non-scientific approaches (Gray & Jones, 2015; Jones and Radaelli, 2015), to science and policy communication, as well as proclaiming normative commitments to both science and democracy. Recently, guideline publications have also been produced that provide detailed instructions about how to conduct NPF research. Along the way several summary pieces have chronicled the NPF’s development. Two of these NPF assessments were part of larger collections of NPF studies, including the 2014 edited volume The Science of Stories and a special NPF symposium issue featured in the Policy Studies Journal. On par with NPF collections emerging every four years, here we offer a third collection of NPF studies that represent some of the best NPF studies to date. This introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the NPF and is followed by a short introduction to the contents of this volume.Item Bounded Stories(Wiley, 2018-11) Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; Raile, Eric D.; French, Kate A.; McEvoy, JamieNarrative Policy Framework (NPF) and framing scholars share an interest in how the construction of policy arguments influences opinions and policy decisions. However, conceptual clarification is needed. This study advances the NPF by clarifying the meaning and function of frames and narrative, as well as their respective roles in creating policy realities. We explore sociological and psychological roots of framing scholarship and map these onto NPF’s science of narratives philosophy, suggesting that narratives can reveal internally held cognitive schemas. We focus on issue categorization frames as boundaries for narrative construction. Within these bounds, narrative settings further focalize the audience by specifying where action toward a solution takes place. Based on 26 interviews with floodplain decision makers in Montana, we capture internally held cognitions through the assemblage of issue categorization frames and narrative elements. We find that settings can traverse issue categorization frames and policy solutions, with actions of characters that unfold within the setting being key. Similarly, we find that a single issue categorization frame can contain multiple different narratives and that individuals may simultaneously hold multiple different narratives internally. Overall, this study contributes to policy process research through establishment of connections among narratives, issue categorization frames, and cognitive schemas.Item Characters matter: How narratives shape affective responses to risk communication(Public Library of Science, 2019-12) Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; Reinhold, Ann Marie; Raile, Eric D.; Poole, Geoffrey C.; Ready, Richard C.; Izurieta, Clemente; McEvoy, Jamie; Bergmann, Nicolas T.; King, HenryIntroduction. Whereas scientists depend on the language of probability to relay information about hazards, risk communication may be more effective when embedding scientific information in narratives. The persuasive power of narratives is theorized to reside, in part, in narrative transportation. Purpose. This study seeks to advance the science of stories in risk communication by measuring real-time affective responses as a proxy indicator for narrative transportation during science messages that present scientific information in the context of narrative. Methods. This study employed a within-subjects design in which participants (n = 90) were exposed to eight science messages regarding flood risk. Conventional science messages using probability and certainty language represented two conditions. The remaining six conditions were narrative science messages that embedded the two conventional science messages within three story forms that manipulated the narrative mechanism of character selection. Informed by the Narrative Policy Framework, the characters portrayed in the narrative science messages were hero, victim, and victim-to-hero. Natural language processing techniques were applied to identify and rank hero and victim vocabularies from 45 resident interviews conducted in the study area; the resulting classified vocabulary was used to build each of the three story types. Affective response data were collected over 12 group sessions across three flood-prone communities in Montana. Dial response technology was used to capture continuous, second-by-second recording of participants’ affective responses while listening to each of the eight science messages. Message order was randomized across sessions. ANOVA and three linear mixed-effects models were estimated to test our predictions. Results. First, both probabilistic and certainty science language evoked negative affective responses with no statistical differences between them. Second, narrative science messages were associated with greater variance in affective responses than conventional science messages. Third, when characters are in action, variation in the narrative mechanism of character selection leads to significantly different affective responses. Hero and victim-to-hero characters elicit positive affective responses, while victim characters produce a slightly negative response. Conclusions// In risk communication, characters matter in audience experience of narrative transportation as measured by affective responses.Item Women and the weight of a pandemic: A survey of four Western US states early in the Coronavirus outbreak(Wiley, 2020-12) Raile, Amber N. W.; Raile, Eric D.; Parker, David C.W.; Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; Haines, PavielleIn the initial months of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, people struggled to adjust to the new normal. The burden of managing changes to home and work life seemed to fall disproportionately to women due to the nature of women's employment and gendered societal pressures. We surveyed residents of four western states in the first months of the outbreak to compare the experiences of women and men during this time. We found that women were disproportionately vulnerable to workplace disruptions, negative impacts on daily life, and increased mental load. Women with children and women who lost their jobs were particularly impacted. These results contribute to the growing body of findings about the disproportionate impacts of crises on women and should inform organizational and government policies to help mitigate these impacts and to enhance societal resilience in future emergencies.Item The stories groups tell: campaign finance reform and the narrative networks of cultural cognition(2019-05) Smith-Walter, Aaron; Jones, Michael D.; Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; Peterson, HollyThe purpose of this study is to test whether groups with different cultural cognition orientations construct different stories about the same policy issue given the same information. We employed a focus group methodology to assemble participants with similar cultural dispositions and used the Narrative Policy Framework to examine the policy narratives that groups form about campaign finance. Our analyses indicate that the stories these homogeneous cultural groups tell associate political process concerns related to campaign finance to their core cultural values. Even when provided with the same information, the stories that the groups produced varied along theoretically consistent cultural dimensions. Our findings show the narrative cores displayed similar attribution of the problem to intentional human action; however we observed variation in the manner in which certain characters were assigned blame, and significant differences in the density of several of the narrative networks. We found that differences in presence of victims emerged along the grid dimension of cultural cognition with egalitarian narratives cores possessing victims, whereas hierarchist narratives did not. A difference that emerged along the group dimension of cultural cognition was the core narrative of individualist groups generated policy solutions, while communitarian narrative cores did not.Item Absent autonomy: Relational competence and gendered paths to faculty self-determination in the promotion and tenure process(2018-09) Skewes, Monica C.; Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; Smith, Jessi L.; Honea, Joy C.; Belou, Rebecca M.; Rushing, Sara; Intemann, Kristen; Handley, Ian M.This research examines ways in which men and women university faculty sought self-determination in the promotion and tenure (P&T) process. Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2012) research tends to view autonomy as the central factor in self-determination, taking priority over other psychological needs of relatedness and competence. The P&T process occurs within a context that inherently limits autonomy, providing a unique opportunity to examine experiences of relatedness and competence when autonomy is constrained. We used a qualitative research strategy with a matched case study design to explore how individuals experience the constructs of SDT (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) within the P&T process. Our project focuses on faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments undergoing P&T review at one university. Women faculty in STEM were compared with men faculty at the same rank and in similar departments concurrently going through P&T review. Findings showed that men reported experiencing self-determination via informational competence whereas women approached self-determination through relational competence. Creating a level playing field for faculty navigating the P&T process requires being attuned to different paths to self-determination, fostering relationships between faculty, and clarifying policies and procedures.Item The Pedagogy of Citizen Participation in Local government: Designing and implementing effective board training programs for municipalities and counties(Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration, 2010) Lachapelle, Paul; Shanahan, Elizabeth A.Although there are some general resources for citizens who are appointed or elected to local government boards, there is a clear need to develop comprehensive and context-specific training material to better prepare citizens for public service and board governance. This study details the development, delivery, and impact of a structured curriculum developed by the authors and used for citizen board training in Montana. The curriculum covers four key areas: (1) Foundations of governance (such as relevant statutes, including state constitutional provisions on the right to participate and right to know, and good governance principles); (2) effective meeting techniques, with a focus on procedural methods such as Robert’s Rules of Order; (3) conflict management; and (4) leadership and team-building skills. Curricular materials include a detailed handbook, case study exercises, relevant handouts and worksheets, and Web based resources such as podcasts. At the end of the training, we asked participants to self-evaluate their level of change in terms of knowledge and behavior, using both print and online surveys with Likert-scale items and open-ended questions. We used the responses to measure the impact of the educational program; analysis showed a positive change in participants’ knowledge and behavior as a result of the training. Strengths, challenges, and implications of the current training curriculum, as well as further program refinement and its delivery in various contexts, are presented and discussed.