Methods

The empirical material of this thesis has been collected from three different detailed development plans and their corresponding documents. Each DDP process consists of three documents, so in total nine documents have been studied, along with three interviews of EIA actors. This is a qualitative study, where the amount of empirical material is correlated to the analysis. 

The selection criterion has been to investigate DDP’s that were produced after 2004, since that is when the rules on environmental assessment of plans and programs took effect. The main criteria of this study are to only investigate detailed development plans that have been classified to cause a significant environmental impact and therefore had to undergo an EIA. The investigated plans are valid detailed plans for land that previously was partially undeveloped and now is developed. Other criteria was to study the DDP process of municipalities of similar size that were not too close to any major city in Sweden and that the municipalities are situated quite close to each other making the study easier to perform. These DDP processes were all performed on a regional level.

My view of the informants has been to not see at them as a vessel of knowledge that I can empty, but as an opportunity to discuss and gain an insight into their view on the research questions and the aim of the thesis (Kvale & Brinkman. 2009).

Data Collection

Documents from detailed development plans have been examined to answer the research questions of this study. The documents are public documents in Sweden and can be collected at the municipality or at their webpage, and each DDP process with three documents is on average 60 pages/DDP process. All inspected EIA reports have been part of the DDP documents and the interviews have been done with the performers of each EIA. I found the contact details to each EIA performer in the EIA’s. I started with contacting them through email and later by phone to set appointments for the interviews. The processing and analysis of the collected data has been done in different steps and in different stages. During the processing of the documents I have used two different checklists to organize and sort the data to facilitate the analysis. During the analytical process of the DDP documents I have been searching for certain patterns, such as:

•  Problems caused by how the execution of the process has been performed or how the EIA performer affects the quality of the process.
• Discrepancies or themes that could be linked to the research questions, as well as the search for the existence or lack of important points. Such as??!
• Supportive information or contradictory information for the aim of the thesis.