Positivists vs. Futurists:researchers’ roles

• objective vs. subjective

• observer vs. facilitator/participant

• knowledge revealer vs. change agent

• reporting vs. performing

• Futures studies assumes that the point of exploring multiple possible outcomes is to help people create the futures they desire: active, value-focussed research.

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systems and their interrelationships, the field is necessarily systemic and holistic in perspective. Because of the difficulties of gathering data in the future, futures researchers tend to gather descriptive data about change in the present, and people’s attitudes towards it, and images of the future, rather than design experimental protocols.