This paper examines the effect of having a third-party scientific expert present in stakeholder interviews. The study was conducted as part of a larger project on stakeholder engagement for natural resource management in the Verde Valley region of Arizona. We employed an experimental design, conducting stakeholder interviews both with and without an identified scientific expert present. Our sample consisted of 12 pairs of interviewees (24 total participants) who we matched based on their occupation, sex, and spatial proximity. For each pair, the scientific expert was present as a third party in one interview and absent in the other. We used a word-based coding strategy to code all interview responses for three known areas of sensitivity among the study population (risk, gatekeeping, and competence). We then performed both quantitative and qualitative analyses to compare responses across the two interview groups. We found that the presence of a scientific expert did not have a statistically significant effect on the mention of sensitive topics among stakeholders. However, our qualitative results show that the presence of a scientific expert had subtle influences on the ways that stakeholders discussed sensitive topics, particularly in placing emphasis on their own credibility and knowledge. Our findings indicate that researchers may be able to pursue collaborative, interdisciplinary research designs with multiple researchers present during interviews without concerns of strongly influencing data elicitation on sensitive topics. However, researchers should be cognizant of the subtle ways in which the presence of a third-party expert may influence the credibility claims and knowledge assertions made by respondents when a third-party expert is present during stakeholder interviews.

本文研究了在利益相关者访谈中聘请第三方科学专家的影响。这项研究是在亚利桑那州的Verde Valley地区进行的，有关利益相关方参与自然资源管理的更大项目的一部分。我们采用了实验设计，在有和没有科学专家在场的情况下进行利益相关者访谈。我们的样本由12对受访者（总共24名参与者）组成，我们根据他们的职业，性别和邻近空间进行匹配。对于每一对，科学专家在一次采访中都作为第三方出席，而在另一次采访中则缺席。我们使用基于单词的编码策略来对研究人群中三个已知的敏感领域（风险，警戒和能力）的所有访谈回答进行编码。然后，我们进行了定量和定性分析，以比较两个访谈组的回答。我们发现，科学利益相关者的存在对利益相关者提及敏感主题没有统计学上的显着影响。但是，我们的定性结果表明，科学专家的存在对利益相关者讨论敏感主题的方式产生了微妙的影响，特别是在强调他们自己的信誉和知识方面。我们的发现表明，研究人员也许可以在访谈期间与多个研究人员在场的情况下进行协作，跨学科的研究设计，而不必担心会严重影响敏感主题上的数据启发。然而，