Compare methods

	Ethnographic Futures Research	Visioning Preferred Futures Workshop
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1980	2009
Originator	Robert B. Textor	Hawai'i School / Millennium Project futures-visioning tradition
Type	Interview-based ethnographic pipeline for eliciting anticipatory scenarios	Normative, participatory backcasting pipeline toward a preferred future
Seminal source	Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (Eds.). (2009). Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0. The Millennium Project. ISBN: 9780981894119	Glenn, J. C., & Gordon, T. J. (Eds.). (2009). Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0. The Millennium Project. ISBN: 9780981894119
Aliases	EFR, Textor Ethnographic Futures Research, Ethnographic Futures Interviewing, Cultural Futures Elicitation	Preferred Futures Visioning, Visioning Workshop, Normative Futures Visioning, Aspirational Futures Method
Related	3	3
Summary	Ethnographic futures research (EFR), developed by the anthropologist Robert Textor, is a qualitative method that elicits people's images of the future through in-depth ethnographic interviews structured around three scenarios: a realistically optimistic future, a realistically pessimistic future, and the future the respondent considers most probable. Rather than imposing the researcher's drivers or categories, the interviewer draws out each informant's own anticipatory thinking in their own terms, asking them to imagine and describe each of the three futures over a defined horizon. Aggregating and analyzing these accounts across many culturally knowledgeable respondents reveals a society's or group's shared hopes, fears, and expectations — its collective anticipatory culture. Catalogued in Glenn and Gordon's Futures Research Methodology, EFR brings the rigor and respondent-centeredness of ethnography to foresight, complementing the more macro, cultural reading of future-images with grounded, individual-level elicitation.	A Visioning Preferred Futures Workshop is a normative, participatory futures method for articulating a shared image of the future a group wants to create, and then working backward from that image to identify the pathway and the present actions that would bring it about. Where exploratory methods ask what futures might happen, visioning asks what future ought to happen and how to get there. Documented as a core technique in the Millennium Project's Futures Research Methodology, it combines aspirational image-building with backcasting: participants first agree on a compelling preferred future grounded in their shared values, then trace the milestones backward from that future to the present, and finally commit to concrete first steps. The method's power lies in mobilizing a community around a positive, jointly owned vision rather than around forecasts or fears.