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GG3
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Urban
module:
Residential segregation in Newcastle upon Tyne |
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Ecosystems
module: Coastal ecosystems - Druridge Bay,
Northumberland |
Spearman's rank
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Unit
GG3:
Investigative geography (skills checklist) |
GG3 Assignment: Designing a questionnaire
- Questionnaires are a set of
pre-planned questions to which answers are written on a
specially prepared form.
- Questionnaires are one of
the most widely used primary data sources in human
geography because the information obtained is up-to-date
and often not obtainable from any other source.
- Poorly planned
questionnaires yield poor quality data.
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Before you begin
this assignment, make sure you have looked at:
- A set of example
questionnaires;
- Guidance on designing
and carrying out a questionnaire;
- Background material
on the two Northumberland villages where the
questionnaires would be used (Belford and
Allenheads).
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In your write up, you should
include the following sections A, B and C.
A. A statement of Aims
It is important to have read the background
information in the course booklets and on the two villages before
starting to decide what you want to investigate. It is not a good
idea to gather information using a questionnaire without knowing
what you want to use it for.
- What is your investigation about? There
are a number of issues you might want to investigate,
concerning rural transport, tourism or commuting. There
may background information you would want to collect
first (eg from the tourist board, the Census or bus
timetables). The more clearly focussed your questions
are, the more likely the questionnaire is to succeed. State
clearly what the issue(s) you are investigating are. This
may be completely different for each student.
- Who do you want to quiz? Do you
want to ask local residents, or are you more interested
in questioning visitors.
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B. The questionnaire
A copy of your questionnaire along with some explanation
of why you chose these questions.
- Questionnaires should be clearly laid out
and easy to read - ideally designed ‘on screen’
to be easily run off and photocopied.
- Keep it short (one side of A4) and use
‘tick boxes’ where possible (it is more
difficult to analyse the results if the questions are
open ended).
- Put the straight-forward questions at the
beginning and the probing ones near the end (this puts
people at ease and gets you more truthful answers).
- Don’t get too personal or people won’t
want to do the questionnaire (eg age or income; you can
usually guess broad age bands such as over 60 or under 20
and its usually better to ask for occupation).
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C. Method
How would you carry out the questionnaire?
- Are you going to sample every tenth
household or would you try to go to every one? Do you aim
to have the same number of questionnaires from each
village? If aimed at tourists, are you going to stand at
car parks/bus stops or near attractions?
- How would you decide where the
village begins and ends (eg would you include
neighbouring farms and isolated dwellings)?
- When would you do the survey?
Choose daytime in the week and many residents will be
away working and tourist numbers could be low. Time of
year crucial for tourists (more
families during school holidays, higher numbers on bank
holiday weekends).
- What problems do you anticipate in
collecting your data?
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