Individual datasets that do not belong to any series.
The study charted forest professionals' experiences of forest conservation in their work, opinions on new means of ensuring biodiversity of forests, principles of forest management, and the development of client interaction in securing biodiversity. The survey is part of the METSO collaborative research project funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (2013-2016).
The respondents were first asked about the type of tasks that are included in their daily work (e.g. consultation of forest owners, creating forest management plans), and about their experiences of new work methods, such as Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) techniques, and new forest management methods made possible by recent changes to the Forest Act. Experiences of voluntary forest conservation were examined, as well as whether the respondents had participated in trainings regarding the new Forest Act or the METSO biodiversity programme. The respondents were also asked to evaluate their own expertise and areas of development both personally and in the industry more generally.
Views on the motives and goals of forest management planning as well as experiences of the professional-client relationship and different types of client interaction were surveyed with a set of attitudinal statements. The study also surveyed attitudes towards voluntary forest conservation as well as forest inventories, their usefulness and reliability.
The respondents were asked about changes in their work tasks within the previous three years. In addition, their wishes for development in their work practices were queried with an open-ended question. The final questions covered work motivation, perceptions of own expertise, new work methods and tools, and the reliability of devices, software and databases used by the respondent's organisation. The respondents' views on ideal work practices and tools were also examined, especially relating to Terrestrial Laser Scanning.
Background variables included gender, year of birth, position of employment, time worked in the current position, education history, and time worked in the industry.
A link to the survey was sent via e-mail to 706 employees of forest management associations (MHY) and 100 employees of OTSO metsäpalvelut. The survey was sent to all forestry advisors, forest planning specialists and other forest professionals at Finnish-language forest management associations, and in the case of smaller forest management associations with the manager as the only employee, the survey was sent to the manager or the association's common e-mail address. E-mail addresses of the forest management associations' employees were obtained from forest owners' associations around Finland.
At OTSO Metsäpalvelut, a link to the survey was sent to all forest professionals who were listed as forest planning specialists in their contact information. E-mail addresses of the employees of OTSO Metsäpalvelut were obtained from a contact information search on the organisation's website. After the initial collection time, two reminder e-mails with a link to the survey were sent to those who had not yet responded.