With funding from the US EPA, SERI conducted a research project to compare three methods for conducting formative evaluations of public participation.  EPA superfund clean up processes can take years.  During this time it is necessary to continually adjust the public engagement process.  EPA customarily collects feedback through informal and non-systematic methods.  We explored the value added from three formal and systematic methods: survey, focus group, and Q methodology.  This paper reports on those results.