After deciding to compare several Scottish universities, the next big challenge I faced was: how do I build an effective framework for comparison? It turned out to be much more complicated than I first thought.

First of all, each university’s sustainability work covers a wide range of areas—from energy management and building design to waste disposal, transport planning, food systems, and more. Different universities often focus on different areas and have different strengths. This variety makes a simple overall comparison difficult and maybe even meaningless. For example, one university might be doing great work with renewable energy, while another might have innovative ways of reducing food waste. So how can I make comparisons that actually mean something?

Another challenge is that even in the same area, universities may use very different communication strategies and platforms. Some may rely heavily on social media, while others focus more on posters around campus, emails, or their official websites. With all these differences, how can I design a framework that fairly evaluates different types of communication?

After thinking it through, I came up with one possible solution: choose a few key areas that all the universities are working on and use those as the basis for comparison. Things like energy use, transport, waste management, and sustainable food are usually covered by most universities. By focusing on these shared topics, I can better compare their communication strategies and how effective they are.

Another option is to select each university’s most representative “best practice” case, and then look at how that particular case was communicated. Even if these examples come from different areas, I can still compare how the communication was done—looking at things like how clear the message was, who the audience was, what platforms were used, how interactive it was, and so on.

I also have to think about the wide variety of communication platforms used by modern universities. They use everything from websites and social media to newsletters, posters on campus, and events. Analyzing all of these might be too much, but focusing on just one platform could give me a limited view. So, I’ll need to find a reasonable balance in my research design.

The Challenge of Building a Comparison Framework / Yunyi Yang / Future Infrastructure, Climate Change and Sustainability: KIPP & Futures Project (2024-25) by is licensed under a