Initial questions
Hey Guys, All of the questions look great. I like Grace's opening question regarding people's thoughts on the causes of homelessness. Also the issue of public housing or low income housing projects (as Alanna has pointed out) might help us gauge support for government involvement and whether or not people believe that the government should play a prominent role in aiding the homeless. I was thinking that a question on safe injection sites might also be helpful. Perhaps a question like: Do you support the opening of additional safe injection sites in Vancouver? Answers could be yes or no or maybe numerical 1=strongly support and 5=strongly oppose. Just some thoughts
It sounds like we have some good potential survey questions developing. We might ask something to measure people's attitudes towards inequality, and whether or not a person's wealth is something they have control over. So a question could be: "People can ameliorate their economic status if they just worked harder" with an option of agree strongly, agree, disagree etc. This question might also help shed light on how much people think the government should be responsible for dealing with poverty/inequality.
Also based on Darren's question about safe injection sites, we could ask something to measure people's attitudes about how much they think drug addiction is a disease that requires treatment.
Great questions and examples so far! I'm wondering if we should start honing in on what our topic should really target at the moment, it seems that people have offered great ideas, however, they seem to be getting quite diverse. I personally think that linking homelessness and government intervention is a great idea, where Grace's initial question and Jason's more specific question flow quite nicely. I think that finding out the varying degrees on what people think of the problem of homelessness or poverty would be interesting to see, following with linking this to government action would be a great way to really guage what people know about this problem, and their ideas on how to solve them.
I also think we should really focus on what type of questions our survey will have in terms of measuring. Do we want a simple yes/no survey, a survey that is based upon a scale (if so, what?), etc. I personally like the 1-5 scale, as this gives a level of potential diverse answers (depending on our question) as well as the potential to speculate causes as to why people chose what they chose. With simple yes/no questions, we're unable to draw as many conclusions/speculations on a topic that is quite broad in itself.
Hello everyone,
In terms of the types of questions our survey will encompass, I also think that we should use something like the Likert scale, since it could help us understand the attitudes of the respondents more clearly, as well as provide us with more diverse answers. I For example, a question about safe injection sites might look something like this:
"Under certain circumstances, safe injection sites are justifiable" 1 - strongly agree 2 - agree - 3 - neutral - 4 - disagree 5 - strongly disagree
Also, adding a "don't know" option might yield more accurate results, since some people may simply not have an opinion about the question itself. It could also provide us with some insight into how much knowledge people have about the specific topic.
I fully agree with you on the proposal to add a "don't know" option. However, we might want to adjust the statement "under certain circumstances," because it can yield some uncertainty. Directing the statement to be more specific to our topic could be more effective, perhaps stating, "The presence of safe injection sites in the Downtown East Side is justifiable."
Just my two cents :), let me know what you think!