Question content, Scope, Purpose

In trying to answer my own question, I had another look at the survey assignment outline (in lecture notes 2.1 & 2.2 on Vista). It does say that the survey will be targeting BC respondents, but it does not say anything about random sampling (e.g. anyone on the street of Downtown Vancouver), selective sampling (e.g. people living in immigration population-dense neighbourhoods), or samples of convenience (e.g. friends and family members). Furthermore, I'm confused as to exactly how many questions we are asking in the practical exercise... are we asking only the 5 questions that we made up about immigration settlement, or are we asking all 50 questions as a class set to each respondent? For me, it would make more sense if it's the latter because having a large sample set with different questions would defeat the purpose of an omnibus survey....

I also had another look at the survey wiki page. It says, "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. " This leads me to believe that we are suppose to construct a survey targeted towards a general BC audience. The latter part of that quote will definitely help us identity who holds what attitude.

So, with that in mind, I came up with a few possible questions. One of the question I thought of is a modification of my earlier idea. So I though instead of specifically asking "how strongly is your decision to hire an employee affected if he or she speaks with a non-English/French accent?", one might ask:

"How strongly is your decision to socially accept another Canadian resident affected if he or she speaks with a non-English/French accent?" I foresee a few problems with this question. First of all, how does one define "social acceptance"? Can we make with more clear without making it too specific/impossible to generalize? Secondly, how does one define a "Canadian resident?" Does it mean a certain legal status, or does it simply define any person who lives in Canada? How can we explain this to the respondents?

The second question I've been brainstorming has to do with legal issues, specifically, the multiculturalism section under the Charter. It reads, in all its glorious obscurity: "27. This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians." There are a few questions we can ask about sec. 27. For instance, the most obvious:

"In the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, Section 27 is dedicated to the value of multiculturalism. It reads, 'This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.' How strongly do you agree with this Section?"

Or, a little more complex:

"In the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, Section 27 is dedicated to multiculturalism. It reads 'This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.' How strongly do you feel that the Section 27 should be more strongly and/or more specifically worded in order to protect the legal rights of Canadians who belong to neither English nor French cultural heritage?"

And finally, the last questions is probably the most general. I've always been a little cynical of Canada touting its own horn about its "celebrating" of multiculturalism, I thought this might be an interesting question to ask.

"Multiculturalism is an official policy of Canada. On a numerical scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "extremely disrespectful toward cultural diversity and its related socio-political issues," 5 being "tolerating toward cultural diversity and its related socio-political issues", and 10 being "extremely respectful toward cultural diversity and its related socio-political issues," how respectful do you think is the Canadian government toward multiculturalism?"