ABSTRACT
Psychological research has shown that the general public often perceives and acts in the face of risk in ways that are very different from those responsible for assessing, managing and communicating these risks. This chapter outlines the development of a satisfactory method for eliciting the mental models of diverse groups that could manage the very different types and degrees of experience and expertise in food chain risks. It demonstrates how different groups of people conceptualise complex situations such as risks in food production. The chapter discusses participants’ interactions with the method, speculates on why using images may have helped them engage with participatory research, and reviews some of the problems encountered. Since the method had been designed primarily to facilitate group discussions of food chain risks, it was paramount that transcripts of the group interview sessions were analysed directly alongside the images produced by the groups.
