Mind Mapping – Anti social behaviour

I decided that mind mapping would be the most effective way to explore anti social behaviour.  It enabled me to visually see connection between particular areas of anti social behaviour. By placing the words and associations on the post-its I was able to freely place them in to certain arrangements, which in tern formed new thoughts and ideas.

I first began by looking at different types of anti social behaviour and writing them down on post-its. When looking at the variety of anti social acts I discovered that they could be defined by and put in to three categories.  These categories are Street acts, Nuisance Neighbours and Environmental.  I then put all the types of anti social behaviour in to there relevant categories.  This led to me thinking about what area I wanted to look in to in more depth.  I began to think about choosing one particular area and creating the campaign that looked specifically at the things in that category. Before trying this technique I was reluctant to choose a specific area of anti social behaviour to focus on because I did not think there was enough scope.

By looking at the different types and categories of anti social behaviour I was able to see that there are connections between them.  Street and environmental anti social behaviour have a number of interlinking types of behaviour that can feature in either of the two categories. It was particularly interesting to see the variety of behaviours that actually come under anti social behaviour.

I then wrote down some emotions associated with anti social behaviour such as intimidated, angry, scared.  I then arrange each type of anti social behaviour around the emotion that I felt it depicted best. Many of the emotions had a number of types of anti social behaviour associated with them.

Yet I could not match any of the emotions I had written for graffiti and fly posting. By doing this exercise it made me aware of the variety of levels of anti social behaviour, serious and the not so serious.  Some types of anti social behaviour effect people more than others.  This led me to think about what the publics perceptions of anti social behaviour where. 

This was a very effective technique as it highlighted areas that I had not thought about.  By visually and physically being able to more the post-its about meant that I could group different areas together, which then sparked off more ideas and particular chains of thoughts

Who does anti social behaviour?

Took two of the stereotypical groups that are linked with anti social behaviour.  Tried to see if either of the groups had particular issues associated with them.  Couldn’t really see any connections between the two groups and issues except that teenagers and students seem to be linked with almost all of the issues. This seemed to concur with the governments Crime Reduction website which explained that “young people and students were particularly likely to state that they had experienced anti social behaviour.”

Didn’t really find using this technique to explore whom carries out anti social behaviour that useful.

2 by 2 Mapping

Through my exploration of the issues of anti social behaviour I then moved on to a different mapping technique to see if any new ideas or groups were created.  By using the axis’s I was able to have a scale to match the behavioural issue against.

One thing that was highlighted by this technique was that anti social behaviour is a larger area that I had previously thought.  This effected the position of the postits on the scale, as the issues written down where still very general in there meanings. Figure 2.1 shows that certain behaviours are mostly carried out by men from a poorer background.  This mapping did not derive anything new.  One of the benefits of this technique is that the categories at either end of the axis’s an easily be altered.

Again I had the same problem, where the majority of the issues could be put on either ends of the scale. For example drug misuse, dumping rubbish, begging and group intimidation can be carried out either during the day or at night.   This could possible be because the categories on either end of the axis’s are to closely linked or just not imaginative enough. I carried on anyway to see what relationships or groups could be formed.  The vast majority of the behavioural issues were classed as serious with only graffiti; fly posting and begging being at the marginal side of the scale.

One area that I thought might potentially through up some interesting groups was whether the behavioural issues were more serious when carried out by groups.  Figure 2.5 shows that to some extent it does.  As one can clearly see there are no issues that fitted into the groups and marginal area of the scale.

When evaluating this result I began thinking about whether it would be beneficial to start to focus my attention on one area of anti social behaviour.  In Figure 2.5 one can see that there is quite a diverse group of issue that are carried out by individuals.  It might be quite nice to focus on individual anti social behaviours and create a campaign for them.  Or even focus on the not so serious behavioural issues like begging graffiti and fly posting to highlight that they are serious and shouldn’t be ignored.

While mapping the issues on the axes I realised that I was just putting the different issues where I thought appropriate. My opinion on a particular issue might not be the same as another’s. I decided to get a couple of my colleagues to place the behavioural issues where they thought appropriate. This proved to be particularly interesting as each colleagues finished map looked completely different from mine.

Figure 2.7 and 2.8 show the two outcomes.  As one can see there are very different from each other.  I then followed up this task by asking my colleagues how they came to deciding on where the issues should be placed on the scale.
The ideas that arose where:

Personal experience played a part in the decision-making.  If they had experienced one of the issues or a friend/family member, they were more likely considerer the issue to be serious.

The context in which the anti social behaviour was carried out in was also a deciding factor.  One example given by my colleagues was vandalism.  If the vandalism was just a small scribble on a toilet door they considered this not to be a serious matter.  Yet if someone had graffiti all over a family run shop they would consider this to be a serious issue.  This was an interesting example that they gave, although they considered a scribble on a toilet door not to be a serious issue, for the person who’s door it was this would have an effect on them and they would consider it to be a serious issue.

Another factor that played a part in their decision process was whether a particular behaviour would harm others.  If it did then they tended to lean it towards the serious end of the scale.