Course:POLI3802012/Survey

Survey Questionnaire Development

This is the main page for the survey topics. To choose the ONE topic you will be involved in, click it below and then add your name to the top of that page at the first available number. You do this by editing the page (see above tab for Edit).

All of your edits will be recorded but your name will only be attached if you have logged in. So, to edit or discuss a page and get credit for doing so, you must login to wiki.ubc.ca (or the login link top left of this page). Please respect this open forum. I will deal very harshly with a student who abuses this learning venue, treats other students' contributions with a lack of respect, or undermines the learning of others in any way.

I highly recommend you read the guide to using a UBC wiki by choosing Help from the menu at left. Attend, especially, to the help page on editing a wiki page and the one on using the talk pages. When you are discussing stuff on the talk page, please sign your remarks by finishing with four tildes (~) and use the indentation formatting with colons (:,::,::: for three sub levels of indentation).

Please use the discussion area (talk page) that accompanies the main page if you want to discuss an issue before making a decision about how to edit the page. Use the discussion tab (talk page) for general discussion as well, including some startup discussion of what research questions, concepts, and hypotheses you're interested in. Or, you can edit and then add a summary justification of what you've done either at the bottom of the page while in editing mode, or alternatively, in the discussion area. You will be credited for any of these contributions, especially intelligent contributions to the talk pages.

When thinking about how to contribute, use the framework of research questions, theory, concepts, hypotheses, and operationalization (measurement). You can edit questions and discuss at any of these levels: for example, whether a given question measures the concept, whether the concept is well defined, whether the question addresses one of the group's research questions, and so on. Remember, this isn't just about writing survey questions, it's really an exercise to actively think about and learn how the quantitative empirical research process works, from defining research questions all the way through theory, conceptualization, measurement, and onward to data analysis and reporting.

Note that you _don't_ have to agree on one dependent variable to be measuring with these questions. You can include a mix of attitudes or behaviours you'd like to _explain_ and attitudes or behaviours that _explain them_. And remember that you'll be able to use all the other variables we collect: attitudes on all the other topics we're going to ask about, plus some socio-demographic and political variables that I'll tack on to the survey, like age, gender, place of residence, party attachments, past voting behaviour, etc.

And remember, you had assigned reading on surveys. HERE

Finally, please keep in mind that we are going to be interviewing all sorts of regular people -- NOT political science students. So you have to keep questions fairly simple and not demand too much expertise and knowledge from respondents. At the same time, if you ask questions about specific policy matters, the number of people answering "don't know" can be useful and interesting in its own right.

Here is last year's survey on the Downtown Eastside so you have an example of something like where we're tyring to end up with all this discussion. Media:POLI_380_DTES_Questionnaire.doc