FIRST QUESTION
I like Jon's formulation of the first four questions, but do you think we should put this question to begin the study:
"Our intent is not to judge, or seem condescending, but gauge how inclined the Canadian population is interested in the topic of defense, in particular Afghanistan. The responses are used for this purpose only. In turn:
How interested are you in the Canadian involvement in Afghanistan?
1. Very 2. Somewhat 3. Little 4. Don't Care
What do you guys think about this question to start off the discussion, just to gauge the level of interest of our respondents right off the bat...
Perhaps, the question could be reworded as: "Do you have any interest in Canada's peace-keeping mission in Afghanistan?
1. Very Interested 2. Somewhat Interested 3. Neutral 4. Somewhat not interested 5. Not Interested 6. No comments
Yea, i like that one more. Its just that I think we should start with something like that just to get a feel for what the population looks like in terms of our topic.
And, I think its crucial to see if there is an interest among our respondents at all, to give us a little insight as to if they have been keeping up with the issue or not
Yeah I think you are spot on Jordan, if the respondents show little or no interest - it would be irrational to waste our time asking them more detailed or specific questions related to the topic because we can likely guess what their response is going to be.
yea for sure, it would seem irrational to ask respondents if they showed very little interest. And if we know that they do show little interest this could translate into how much we value their responses to the rest of the questions.
hey
As i said somewhere else on this huge mess slash maze of a page is that im not a super huge fan of asking people about their interest/knowledge. Because if they put that they are uninterested are we then prepared to throw away those results? and we only have 5 questions so i guess i feel they could be better spent but if everyone else is on board with it then I'd be okay with it. It's a good idea and if we had more questions I would put it on but since we only have 5 i dunno.
I see your point Jacqueline about the number of question constraint, I would put it for sure if the survey was longer. If you guys don't want it i'm good with it, but it may have been a simple way to gauge how much we value each response. We don't necessarily throw the results away if they show no interest but if people respond and they have no interest, we can possible gauge how effective their answers may be. If they show lots of interest we can at least be a little sure that they have some knowledge about the topic. But if they don't have any interest at all, we can possibly weight their responses less heavily. If we don't ask this question then it would hard to tease apart this information, as we would nothing to base it on. For example, somebody could be answering a question just to answer it and have no clue about Afghanistan at all, but just trying to finish the survey. At least we can know that this person has no interest at all through this question. Maybe this is more appropriate for a larger survey however. I'm good putting it up or not.
thought?
I agree with Jordan on this point because I cannot emphasize how crucial this is - you want to make sure that your respondents have some knowledge or interest about Afghanistan - which would be clearly be shown after asking this basic question before moving on to more specific questions about Afghanistan and or defense, if a person does not show any interest, that's does not mean that his answers to the rest of the question will become invalid, rather, just that we as the surveyor will know the ways in which conclusions can be drawn after finishing the survey. However, if the rest feel that it is not crucial, then I am fine with it as well but I think this questions is crucial to get more honest / useful information / replies to the other questions in the survey.
I don't like the idea of simply saying "how interested are you?" It's much too vague. This could be misconstrued as people interested in the mission continuing. People on both sides of the debate will be interested.
Gordon,
I like the question of interest for the reasons stated above, but perhaps we can reword it so it is not so vauge. Maybe something like "how interested are you in the topic of" or a question relating to the amount of time spent reading/watching media related to Afghanistan. Such as:
"On average, how much time do you spend consuming media (television, newspaper, radio) about the war in Afghanistan?"
Yeah, I think Jon is on the right track with his question. However, I think we might have a problem regarding the actual available media coverage. I doubt most average people invest extra time researching Afghanistan which makes this question reliant on the amount of information displayed by the mass media. I might be wrong, but usually news regarding Afghanistan is limited to casualties.
I think Jonathan's question is a very good one to determine the respondents interest in Afghanistan. It gets right to the point, also i think it could be easily measured in hours per week/month
I think I agree with Chris. The question is vague because its intent is to be vague. It is to ask respondents their interest in Afghanistan. Now whatever that may be from keeping up with news coverage as Jon said, or reading the paper, to more intense things like attending public rallies or meetings. The question I asked never intended to be narrow, because narrow would not be applicable to the entire population (or respondents in our survey for that matter). The question was worded vague, because in my opinion and you can disagree with me here, the question needs to be vague to reach out to all of the population. I like Jon's question, however what if people are interested in Afghanistan but don't watch or listen to any media about it. What if they are attending meetings or public events to show their interest. By narrowing the question, we defeat the purpose of the question. People can be interested but not even pay attention to what is said on radios or televisions. To show interest can mean anything...by limiting this you limit the question and defeat the purpose. Sure it may seem vague, but to me it may be the only way without really crippling the question. How can we possibly garner all ways people show their interest into the confines of one question...it would be much too long. Interest can mean anything and since this is vague its only fitting that the question be vague.
What do you guys think?
All along, I have been advocating the need to ask a question that allows us to measure the respondents interest in the matter at hand (Afghanistan) and I totally agree with your rationale and reasoning in this matter Jordan.
Oh my goodness. This is disorganized! I think there is good discussion going on about the first question, I'm just a bit confused as to why we need to gauge their interest in defense policy.. is it a question in and of itself, or are we trying to discover some underlying basis to which we gauge the rest of their answers.
If it's a question for the value of itself, then it might be too broad (maybe we can alter it a bit?). If it's to gauge the rest of the survey, I mean... I feel it's kind of irrelevant.
I do think it's a good idea to throw in a small introductory disclaimer though. agreed.
I think Jon's question 1 proposed initially is a decent opening question. It's not invasive, and it basically determines Canadians interest or priority level in defense by asking whether we should increase funding (put their money) towards defense.
What if Jon's question was rephrased to something like "On a scale of 1-5, how adequate is media coverage in Afghanistan?". Those who rate the adequacy of media coverage lower will be considered interested because they want more media coverage of Afghanistan and those who rate it high will be considered disinterested. What do others think?
I gotta put it out there I don't think I could be more against this gauging people's knowledge question. Here are my arguments against it, if everyone else wants it obviously thats fine then I don't want to be a survey question dictator but here is why I think it is not effective: 1. It is still not going to give us workable choices. Ok so we dont throw the results away we weigh them differently. How? what function on spss will allow us to put more emphasis on some questions and not others when trying to determine the mean answer? 2. No matter how hard we try I do not think we could ever get the question answered properly, standardized tests can barely test a students knowledge on a topic and they have been at it for years. 3. It is utterly and completely and totally absolutely irrelevant what there knowledge is on Afghanistan. If we want to know what educated people who have studied Afghanistan think about Afghanistan we can go to Jstor and search Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. We want to know what average BC residents that vote think about it. If they go to the polls with incomplete information then they are going to take our survey with incomplete information. The point is not to find out what smart people think, or avid Afghanistan researchers think, its to find out what everyday people think. 4. Your creating a selection bias within the survey!!!!! We don't want to just hear from people who know about Afghanistan we want to hear from a group of individuals who we could transcend their opinions to generate an estimate about what a greater population would feel about the issues. Thats what we have been learning in class and that should influence our survey.
I know I put it harshly, but thats why I feel it would be a huge huge huge mistake. But if everyone thinks its needed then I suppose I understand.
I have to say I'm with JacquelineBriard on this too. Can we rephrase it to gauge the "importance" the respondent could place on Afghanistan instead on their "knowledge" of the situation?
On Spss I wouldn't be surprised if their weighted tabs as to give more emphasis on one or the other, but I could be wrong because this is the first time I have used it. I could see Jacqueline's concern, but I do believe that interest and and keeping up on the topic will translate into a greater knowledge on the topic, which is important to the survey. Again, this may be more appropriate in a longer survey, and we may not wan't to use up a question for this and I'm fine with it, I just believed it would be interesting to see what the interest level is in the Canadian population. Putting it in or not is fine with me. With Bala's post at the top for the voting on which question you like, we will see if this question is wanted by the majority. If not there's plenty of good questions to choose from.
If the point of the question is just asking how interested people are in Afghanistan thats fine I am just against using that information to weigh some peoples responses more then others because I feel that wouldn't be surveying the average person it would be selecting for those who have researched more on Afghanistan.
I agree with Jaqueline, and Jordan I do believe it would be interesting... it would be difficult to actually determine whether their interest actually related to the amount of true knowledge they had. I think we should maybe just rule it out?
I agree with Jacqueline, and Jordan I do think it would be interesting... although it may be difficult to determine whether or not their interest actually affected the amounts of true knowledge they have? I think maybe we should just rule it out.