Priorities for the World
One of the major criticisms of the G-20 summit in Toronto was the lack of environment on the agenda (although the fire-bombing anarchist radicals took most of the media attention). Our recent global recession took centre stage.
Is recovery from recession the top priority for nations in this era? For people?
A few possible survey questions: Is the environment a priority for the Federal/Provincial Government of Canada? yes/no/unsure
Are Canadian Federal policies successful in sustaining the environment? yes/no, needs improvement/no, does not need improvement/unsure
Is the Canadian economy sustainable? yes/no/unsure
Would Likert be a better scale?
instead of protecting the environment, we could use sustaining the environment? It's a little less presupposing prehaps. I think yes/no/maybe is good if we add in an "unsure/don't know" option and instead of "maybe" we could say "needs mprovement"? I'm not too sure if I like the word maybe, i feel like when answering the question, people may answer maybe when they don't know how else to respond to the question, but I don't know, what do you think?
Jennifer - I like these questions - they are nice and general, but I think definitely using the Likert would be a better scale. We also might want to include "Do you believe" before all your questions. Although sustaining is still ambiguous, and requires knowledge about the environment and economy that our respondents may not have. We may also want to include a time frame, like "in the past five years" or "since the Conservative government has held a minority government".
Some questions that build upon yours would be "How serious do you consider global warming to be" "What percentage of the federal government budget should be put towards environmental issues?" "Do you think that subsidies should be provided for green energies?" "If affordable and available, would you be willing to switch to a green energy source?"
I kind of agree with what Samantha said but maybe we could something asking people to rank in importance what the canadian government should be handling. I think asking really specific stuff like what percentage of the federal budget should go to something is a bit off. Maybe if the question itself had some figures such as right now X percentage goes to this and X percentage to that, should this be higher or lower in your opinion. Something like that. Then you could add in more questions that are yes/no like the subsidies one.
I like this idea, its clear and concise. I also suggest that we "rank importance" instead of posing yes and no questions to more debatable and open issues. I think we should choose a couple environmental issues and ask how these are being handled by the govt in terms of priority, or choose a single one (ie BC forestry or biodeiversity) and ask (in rank form) how the government/province is addressing the question at hand.