Questions on Senate Reform

Meh, wrote a bunch on my phone and then accidentally hit a link. Shame on you iPhone and your touchscreen.

What I was going to contribute here is the possibility of adding a question in order to make everything just more clear for the respondents, and to make it possibly easier for us to calculate the data results after they come back. It's up to everyone whether it's worth another question to do this, and I'm not all too sure myself whether it's necessary. It would look something like this:

Q1: "Which statement best reflects your view about the senate?"

1. The senate is ineffective and needs to be abolished.

2. The senate is ineffective and needs to be reformed.

3. The senate is effective.

4. Don't care/Don't know.

[If I've missed any other reasonable responses to this question, feel free to add them.]

This question can then be followed up by asking:

Q2: "If you felt that the senate is ineffective and needs to be reformed, which of the following reforms do you think are necessary?" (Select all applicable answers)

1. The senate should be elected.

2. The senate should be proportionally divided according to population.

3. The senate should be proportionally divided according to region.

4. The senate should have term limits.

5. Senators should have reduced salaries.

6. Other

[Again, I'm thinking of these on the spot, feel free to add/subtract/criticize any of these options.]

-- In response to Deanie and Grace, what kind of distribution do you expect? Part of what I think we should measure isn't necessarily the validity of people's reasons for what they believe, but simply the *sentiment* of the population.

If a person puts a "1" for their knowledge of the way the senate works, would this condition them to answering "Don't know" on further questions? This also matters because it's surprisingly difficult to measure yourself against an invisible standard. I personally wouldn't really know how to answer that question. I might say I'm a 2, a 3, or even a 4, depending on my mood. This is a 50% variation when a scale only goes from 0 to 5.