Step 1: Determining Purpose and Scope

State Your Purpose

The first step is to establish the purpose of your social profile. When considering the purpose of conducting your watershed's social profile, identify several specific outcomes or goals that you want to achieve. In most cases, your purpose will be to identify information that can be used by the watershed management committee to make more informed decisions. Better decisions can be defined as those being more reflective of the preferences of the watershed stakeholders, those based on data or science that can be verified, or perhaps those that are actually more likely to be implemented in the watershed. Taking time to agree on goals and outcomes helps ensure that your committee has the same expectations of what the social profile process will involve.

Determine the Scope

Once you agree upon the reasons for conducting your social profile, your committee must decide on the scope of your social profile. The scope refers to exactly which key social issues you will investigate with your social profile. Remember, social issues refer to human aspects of the environment. Social issues will vary from watershed to watershed depending on unique cultural, social, economic, and political conditions.

In determining the scope of your social profile, your committee must decide which social issues are of importance to your watershed and which social issues to address within the social profile. Based on our observations, we suggest that all social profiles should include information about the following questions. Depending on the unique situation of your watershed, you may also include other issues to explore.

Minimum Data Set for a Social Profile

1. Who lives in the watershed?
2. How do residents earn their livelihood?
3. How do residents use and impact the natural resources of the watershed?
4. How do the conditions of the natural resources impact residents?
5. What vision do residents have for the watershed? What is important to residents?
6. What are residents' opinions about the proposed watershed management plan?

When you answer these questions with your social profile, you will identify the key social data and information needed for a reasonable discussion of social issues in your watershed plan. In the following sections, you'll learn the steps involved in collecting this data and preparing a social profile.

Determine Whether You Will Need Outside Help

At this point, you must decide if a consultant will assist with the social profile. If a consultant is used, this person needs to be involved from the very beginning and throughout the remainder of the process. The use of such outside consultants does not preclude the need for the watershed coordinator and committee to understand the social profile. The quality of the profile is likely enhanced by an actively involved committee that contributes specific knowledge about the community and watershed. The more the coordinator and committee understand the research and data collection process, the more involved they can be.

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