Final Questions (draft 1) & Final Draft
I tried to gather the main questions to see what is already agreed upon and what is missing. We don't have a third question => we need another question.
Question 5 needs to be discussed.
Q1 COST "How important is cost in your decision to make choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable
Q2 OPINION ABOUT IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS Individual efforts, including recycling, composting, biking, and using public transit, make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change? (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree
Q3
Q4 BELIEF ABOUT THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON CANADA Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years d)0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment e)Not Applicable - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.
Q5 SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES Which of the following sustainable practices do you do on a regular basis: -recycle -use reusable food/beverage containers -use reusable bags -compost -take public or alternative modes of transportation -buy local products -use energy-efficient lighting and/or appliances 1 of the above, 2 of the above, 3 of the above, 4 of the above, 5 of the above, 6 of the above, 7 of the above.
First, as we already have questions about beliefs and opinions, I would suggest that we add a question about practices. Secondly, I think that for the final version we should change the order of the questions. I would not start by asking a question about the cost because it would give the impression that it is the main focus and people maybe won't feel very comfortable with it at first. So I would start with a general and opinion question like Q2, then maybe Q5 as it is directly related. Then Q1, because it could be one of the reason why they don't act in a sustainable and it would nicely follow Q2 and Q5. Then Q4 is kind of another topic so I'll put it after and maybe we should find another question about climate change that include practices so that it gives us more details about climate change.
I agree with Caroline! I think we should put Q2 first, followed by Q5 and then the more detailed questions. I was thinking maybe we could include a question about how much time the individuals spend researching/talking about sustainability issues? I guess it could be an interesting way to find out the gap between how much information they are getting and how they are actually making sustainable choices (asked in Q5)
Fantastic work Caroline and Naomi. I think we have a great list. You left question 3 open, and I think the question I posed on the governments role would fit nicely because it counters the question on the individuals role. I am not sure how others feel about this?
Perhaps the order could be 2 followed by 5, and then 1, after which is the governments role question and then finally question 4. (2,5,1,3, and 4)
Thanks for putting up this draft caroline, it has made it alot easier to see how the questionnaire is going. I agree that Q2 should be first, followed by 5 and so on, depending on the outcome of question 3.
I also really like Naomi's idea of letting question 3 gauge the amount of time spent educating yourself over sustainability issues, and this could include finding out about the correlation between media coverage and sustainability that I suggested earlier.
Questions look great. I agree with Aarondeep about the Govt vs. Individual. I'm just concerned about the phrasing at this stage. Also after rereading Q1 a couple of times, I find it sounds a little awkward, wordy or perhaps redundant - "your decision to make choices" ... It may just be me, but maybe we could rephrase it to- How important is cost in making choices that reduce your impact on the environment?
I think the simpler wording that Jes suggests is better. After rereading question 1 several times, I realised it more elongated than it needs to be.
In defining "costs" are we just defining it in terms of monetary value or is it more of a broad statement that can also encompasses time, etc.? I think that we should put into brackets what we mean by costs since I'm sure money is not the only reason why people do not choose more sustainable choices.
So for example: "How much do you factor in cost(time,money,access)when deciding to make choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" 1)a lot 2) somewhat 3)not at all
The order of the questions does need changing: 2, 5, 1, 3, 4.
Q1 should be reworded to be more concise. As for "cost", it's supposed to refer to monetary cost. If you want to include some more elaboration into it as it's done in Q2, that should be fine.
Q5 should be changed from "on a regular basis" to "on a weekly basis" (based on discussion from the relevant thread).
Also, shouldn't all of the questions include an option (6) for "Not Applicable"?
I think Q3 should be some form of the information question Naomi suggested. It would be helpful to gauge people's level of understanding/information on environmental issues. Again using a scale would most likely be the best gauge. Good stuff guys!
I think Q3 should be some form of the information question Naomi suggested. It would be helpful to gauge people's level of understanding/information on environmental issues. Again using a scale would most likely be the best gauge. Good stuff guys!
Hey guys, if we are going to make Q3 about an individuals level of information, I think we need to decide if the question will be one of two ways. the first being something along the lines of "How informed do you consider yourself on environmental issues? 1) Well informed, 2) somewhat informed, 3) not very informed, 4) not at all." or we could ask it in another way, such as, "How much time do you spend reading (researching?) environmental issues (per week maybe?): the answer scale we would have to figure out, possibly 1)10+ hours, 2)7-10 hours, 3) 4-7 hours, 4)1-3 hours, 5) less than one hour, 6) none.
I guess these are two ways of trying to get the same information. I think the second question would allow us more information to analyze and give a more accurate depiction of the relationship between hours spend educating oneself vs. the first question which simply asks them to tell us how educated they feel they are. The second one is more concise, I feel and it leaves less room for self-interpretation which the first question is very open to.
Is there anyway we could do a follow up question for question three? So if we ask the first question that Michael wrote in terms of how informed each individual feels they are, we could do a follow up question for those who answered that they are well or somewhat informed. This way we could try to find a correlation between how informed they actually are and how much they are actively pursuing to keep themselves informed. This would be another for us to measure to what degree they care about staying actively involved, which should dictate their likeliness of making more or less sustainable choices.
I think Shannon asked the TA last week, and he said that follow-up questions count as 2 questions. Can anyone else verify this? Otherwise, the follow-up question strategy would be great and would work really well with a research question on education/awareness and sustainability choices.
@ Michael, yes I agree that the second question gives a more objective analysis of the individual's awareness since everyone has different standards of how informed is "well-informed"! @ Ariel, I think Q5 asks how much the individual contributes to making sustainability choices so we could connect Q3 and Q5 :)
Hey guys, I am slightly worried about adding new questions at this stage. Lets try to fix and quirk the ones we have so that we have five efficient and strong questions by tomorrow.
I think measuring how well informed a person thinks they are is a good idea. Needless to say people will have differing opinions on what constitutes as being informed, but regardless their answer will reflect their self perception of awareness. Also I think that this question would fit in well as the first one asked because if a person feels they are unaware of issues they can answer at the start and their answers will reflect this opinion (hopefully).
However, this said it might have the opposite effect, with people giving an answer of being well informed, and so the rest of the answers they give try and reflect there first choice, regardless of the reality. Therefore it might best be asked near the end of the survey.
Final draft of question- version 2
So this thread is getting increasingly difficult to navigate, I'll try to include as many as the revisions as possible. I am going to change Q5 to an answer scale in ranges rather than having 7 options.
Q2 OPINION ABOUT IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS Individual efforts, including recycling, composting, biking, and using public transit, make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change? (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree
Q5 SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES Which of the following sustainable practices do you do on a weekly basis: -recycle -use reusable food/beverage containers -use reusable bags -compost -take public or alternative modes of transportation -buy local products -use energy-efficient lighting and/or appliances (1)1-2 of the above (2)3-4 of the above (3) 5 or more of the above (4) not applicable .
Q1 COST "How important is cost in making choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable
Q3 SUGGESTED QUESTION FOR NUMBER 3"How much time do you spend learning about environmental issues per month: 1)10+ hours, 2)7-10 hours, 3) 4-7 hours, 4)1-3 hours, 5) less than one hour, 6) none.
Q4 BELIEF ABOUT THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON CANADA Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years d)0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment e)Not Applicable - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.
I am also going to suggest that for Q4 we change the question to:
Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment _____
(1)during my lifetime (2)after my lifetime (3)not applicable - climate change is HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment (4)not applicable - climate change will not have a noticeable affect on Canada's environment
or something along these lines, just so we don't have such arbitrary time frames.
These questions are a good final draft!
I think leaving Question 4 as it is may be best because we're trying to gauge how people think climate change will impact the environment over time. By switching it to "during, after...my life time" we're letting the participants decide what they feel is an adequate measure. Since we're not measuring the participant's ages in this survey, it may be hard to account for their perceptions of "lifetime" as a quantifiable #.
I completely understand where you are coming from with your critique of "during, after... my life time," my thought process, however, was that this measure would allow us to assess if the individual believed climate change was an issue that would impact their lives, or if they believed in it but still viewed it as a distant issue not relevant to their lives. I just think the year scale in question 4 is a little arbitrary and the results might now be that relevant. I think the age of the individuals is irrelevant as we are not measuring a time frame as much as we would be measuring direct impact on their lives.
I think we should leave Q4 as it was with the answers as years (e.g. 20 years).
It gives us more concise figures to work with as the idea of 'lifetime'is so much more subjective... (think about the perception of 'lifetimes'in perhaps the 'developing' world vs. developed world, or rural. vs urban... etc., etc., etc. ) At the end of the day, I think if you really did want to measure lifetime, you can go into the data set and work with the individual responses by looking at the age of the responsdents and their answers. If they answer that they think climate change will affect them in 20 and/or maybe 50 years.. you can assume they think it will change in their lifettime. Furthermore, if someone replies in the next 100 years, I think it's safe to say that they don't they will be affected.
The draft looks good Shannon! My only concern is that question 3 seems a bit too vague. Maybe we could rephrase the question to something like "How many hours per week do you spend reading/watching news on sustainability issues"?
I agree with the comment above. I think Q3 phrasing is slightly inappropriate, because I do not know many people who actively sit down to research environmental issues on a weekly basis. Naomi's suggestion offers a more realistic alternative, and one which will not exclude the majority in answering.
Other than that I think the survey has shaped up well.
I also agree with both Anna and Naomi. The word "learning" needs to be changed because it seems to have too formal of a connotation and may not account for the other forms that individuals take in information about environmental issues. More informal ways of learning such as reading posters of facts around campus or holding events or promotions may be another way people "learn" about these issues.
So I definitely vote for it to be changed to what Naomi wrote over the original..
"How many hours per week do you spend reading/watching/engaging yourself with sustainability issues"?
I just took out news and added engaging yourself. Just an option..
okay, so with 1 hr left, here's the 'final' draft of what we have so far:
Q1. OPINION ABOUT IMPACT OF INDIVIDUAL EFFORTS "Individual efforts, including recycling, composting, biking, and using public transit, make substantial differences in environmental issues such as climate change?" (1)strongly agree (2)somewhat agree (3)neutral (4)somewhat disagree (5)strongly disagree
Q2. SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES "Which of the following sustainable practices do you do on a weekly basis: -recycle -use reusable food/beverage containers -use reusable bags -compost -take public or alternative modes of transportation -buy local products -use energy-efficient lighting and/or appliances (1)1-2 of the above (2)3-4 of the above (3) 5 or more of the above (4) not applicable .
Q3. COST "How important is cost in making choices that reduce your impact on the environment?" (1) Very Important (2) Important (3) Neutral (4) Not important (5) Not at all important (6) Not Applicable
Q4. SUGGESTED QUESTION FOR NUMBER 3"How many hours per week do you spend reading/watching news on sustainability issues?: 1)10+ hours, 2)7-10 hours, 3) 4-7 hours, 4)1-3 hours, 5) less than one hour, 6) none.
Q5. BELIEF ABOUT THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON CANADA Climate change will have a noticeable effect on Canada's environment in the next ___ a)25 years b)50 years c)100 years d)0 years - Climate change HAS ALREADY noticeably affected Canada's environment e)Not Applicable - Climate change will NOT have a lasting effect on Canada's environment.
The question order has been updated and a slight revision has been made to Q4, but on all other questions, I would say there's been a reasonable consensus. Of course, no survey question can be perfect, but these seem good nevertheless.
Hey guys! I was just wondering, are the questions on the main page(the page under the 'Course' tab) the final draft? I think for Q4, we should eliminate the word 'engaging in sustainability issues' since we're strictly dealing with how much information the individual is receiving and the word 'engaging' produces ambiguity and the respondents might think the question is asking about their participation in sustainability issues (like those we ask in Q5)!