Survey
When it comes to researching the needs, desires, and/or attitudes of any given population, the social scientists’ best tool is the survey.  Being that the U of O Environmental Leadership Program excels in survey development, coupled with our client’s stated need for social science research, the CST focused its efforts towards creating and implementing a survey that primarily measured the employee attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge surrounding target indicator areas.

While surveys have a wide variety of applications and can be conducted via many different means (telephone, mail, phone interview), they are not merely a haphazard collection of questions.  Properly designed surveys have a common set of characteristics regarding sampling and coding, and development of a survey requires efforts towards research, design, and implementation, not to mention collection of data and data analysis.  As a group, the CST took these factors into consideration prior to beginning the task, and adjusted our efforts accordingly.

We began our efforts with background research on how to develop a survey, our primary source being H. Russell Bernard’s Research Methods in Anthropology.  We also used internet sources and preceding survey examples to augment research.  This research gave us information and knowledge helpful with construction of relevant, pertinent questions, correct methodology for choosing a sample size from our population, as well as reason and justification for our chosen method of implementation.  We were also grateful to have a resource base within our own team leaders, Katie Lynch and Rebecca Silver, whose expertise and knowledge in social sciences research proved to be indispensable.

Throughout the design process, the CST had to adapt, reorganize, refine, and/or remove entire sections, questions, and individual words from questions.  What began as an exploratory approach toward questionnaire creation eventually resulted in a comprehensive set of questions formulated to measure the specifics of the project.  As a result of client input and adjustment as the project continues, survey implementation is currently underway through the use of an internet-based tool by the name of SurveyMonkey.  Once completed by employees, the CST will collect, analyze, and determine hypotheses from the survey data.  Being the important tool that it is, the survey will continue to be a focus of the CST throughout the winter ’07 term.