A mental map shows someone's view of a place. An interview helps explain what they drew or left out.
A mental map shows how a person sees or remembers a place. Give respondents the same base map and ask them to mark features relevant to your question, such as familiar routes or valued spaces. Keep their choices: the size, detail, labels and missing features may reveal what feels important or unfamiliar.
Follow up with a semi-structured interview. This uses prepared open questions but allows further questions based on the answers. Ask "What made you include this place?" rather than suggesting a reason. Get permission to record or take notes, let people decline, and remove identifying details from their accounts.
Compare the drawing with the base map, then use the interview to explain the differences. A missing park could be unknown, irrelevant to the task or deliberately avoided. The omission alone does not tell you which.
Across several accounts, look for recurring themes. Coding means labelling passages with themes such as access or social contact. Use the same coding rules, but keep differences and exceptions. Two people may value the same shelter for quite different reasons.
Step by step
Collect the maps
Use the same task and base map, while keeping each person's response.
Ask open questions
Ask about their features and memories without suggesting what they should mean.
Read both together
Use the drawing and interview to explain the person's experience. Keep accounts that differ.
Worked example: Code without losing the story
One invented interview says "I meet friends under the shelter" and another says "The covered route helps during rain." Both may relate to sheltered space, but one emphasises social contact and the other practical access. A useful coding scheme can record both meanings.
Watch out for this
A mental map is useless if distances are inaccurate.
Its purpose can be to investigate perception and experience. Distortion is something to interpret alongside the interview, not automatically discard.
Check your understanding
What is the best follow-up to a respondent drawing one small park unusually large?
- Why have you drawn the park wrongly?
- What led you to show this park in this way?
- You must visit every day, correct?