I am a student at Ohio University, I am conducting a survey for a Research Methods class.

The survey asks several questions about how you implement Leave no Trace and then attempts to assess your level of ecological knowledge.

This should take about an HOUR to complete.

The survey is done thanks to those who responded.

Thank you for your time.

Keith

Edited by kiacovone on 03/08/2011 14:16:31 MST.

Your response rate will be a lot better if you cut it to a 1/4 or a 1/5 of that.

an HOUR ?????

not to be a poopy person, but an HOUR !!!!!
wrong.
just wrong.
not going to work.
my entire HOUR, and no value to peter ?

no.
---
and this is their research method ? (well,... it's "college". no explanation necessary ... )
ok .. ohhh kayyy ...

make us an offer.
naked pictures of your sister ? .. something !
---
basic human interaction 101.

i have something you might want.
you desire me to hand it to you.
options: (in reverse order of cost)(because given time, people will shoot back)
A.- gun.
B. - purchase
C. - schmooze
D. - guilt (i'm not sure of this one, but my mother was italian)

dude, go for C. tell us a story. help us Buy into it. make us Want to hand you value.

v.
too early, and hit the coffee too hard. (so blame folgers)

I've co-taught a research methods course for the past 10 years with the Chair of my Dept. and all I can say is that your survey needs some major help. I'm surprised that your Prof let you field this survey without reviewing it.

I could give you some advice, but it would take well over an hour. Just starting with you very first question: Even though this is just for a class, I doubt that your school's Committee on Human Research would be happy about you interviewing people under the age of 18 without their parents permission.

Next, your second question is a question, not a statement. You have it phrased as follows: "What is your current occupation."

Third, you ask the question: "What is your race?" and have the following response options:

White/Caucasian
African American
Hispanic
Asian
Native American
Pacific Islander
Other

Hispanic IS NOT a race. Look to the US Census for help with these questions. For instance, their wording of the ethnicity question is as follows: "Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?"

http://www.census.gov/schools/pdf/2010form_info.pdf

I could literally go down your entire survey instrument and point out problem after problem. You should consider pulling this survey and starting again with help from your teacher.

Best wishes,
Tommy

Beyond my attention span, sorry I just couldn't finish this survey. At the end it does say:

"Questions taken from Jon Young's Tourist Test"

Which it actually did start to feel like a test.

Kt

I don't trust these university study people : )

He's probably trying to find out what happens when he requests an unreasonably long survey

Please give the kid a break, folks! It's a college class assignment. He's still learning how to do this as well as how to analyze the responses his survey gathers.

Constructive criticism like Tommy D's will help him learn what works and what doesn't.

For example, IMO the survey is about ecology, not Leave No Trace, so it is misnamed.

A quick look at his survey, and especially the "rapid-fire, off-the-top-of-your-head" manner in which he wants you to answer makes me think it should take 15 minutes or less. You are really going to have to know your regional ecology, flora, and fauna to be able to answer the bulk of his questions.

The depth of such knowledge required will no doubt discourage most folks who start. Like me, you don't want to admit you know a whole lot less than you thought you did. Once I got past the demographic information he requested, it took me all of three minutes to give up on it for just that reason.

Edited by wandering_bob on 03/07/2011 12:11:29 MST.

i started to fill it out, but man, i lost the trail and the bread crumbs were eaten.

>>For example, IMO the survey is about ecology, not Leave No Trace, so it is misnamed.

Well, it's definitely not about LNT, but it's not about ecology either. Ecology is about systems. Questions about discrete trivia (name a snake, name a plant, describe the smell of fox pee) don't have anything to do with ecology per se. They're just nature knowledge. And with all the random questions, it covers anthropological history, hydrology, meteorology, soil geology, and probably trivia in other topics as well.

Keith,
As others have pointed out, your survey has serious problems. I really recommend you ditch it and start from scratch. Apart from the structural problems, your topic is too broad, your questions either too specific or too open-ended, and your language is full of jargon and contradictions.

Edited by spelt on 03/07/2011 16:26:32 MST.

Thanks for the feed back on the survey.

I agree it needs to be shorter.
I wasn't sure how else to measure what people no about the natural world.

This survey was approved by my Prof.
Part of the problem with the wording is that we only had a couple of days to write this survey so proof reading time was short.
We should have been working on it longer or we should have had a smaller class so the instructor actually had time to review the survey's more throughly for problems.

What I was wanting to find out was how people implemented the LNT principles and if their level of knowledge about the environment effected how they used the LNT principles.

Ecology is about cycles but there are real living beings attached to those cycles. If you only look at cycles you risk missing the forest for the tree's.

Again thanks to those who took the survey and to those who provided feed back.