Efficacy of and Suggested Improvements

Efficacy of and Suggested Improvements for the City of Coquitlam Questionnaire In August of this year, the City of Coquitlam distributed a questionnaire to determine the level of interest of the respondents related to the proposed construction of a new Forest Adventure Playground on existing park land. The survey could be returned via regular mail, by fax, or by email; in addition, city employees were positioned at entrances to the park and attempted to have park visitors complete the short questionnaire on site.

The questionnaire itself consisted of only three items directly related to the research question -- that is, only three items on the questionnaire were meant to gage the level of interest and/or approval for the proposed Forest Adventure playground. Additional items established the age of the respondents (in very broad categories) and their status as citizens of the City of Coquitlam, neighboring towns, or as visitors to the area.

There are some definite strengths to the instrument and the overall methodology employed in conducting this research, but there are also some areas where significant improvement could be achieved. The items on the questionnaire were immensely open-ended, which in one way provided a great strength to the instrument.

With items such as, "Do you support the City of Coquitlam establishing a Forest Adventure Playground?" And "Please identify the degree to which you expect to participate or support this type of activity," and with plenty of room for individual comments following them, the city is sure to have collected a wide variety of personal responses that speak directly about people's beliefs on this issue, without forcing them to choose a category to which they feel they must add addendums or explanations.

In this way, the instrument avoids the common pitfall of closed-ended questions in which certain answers are almost always automatically excluded, allowing and even asking for all possible answers and caveats (Maxfield & Babbie 2009, pp. 173).

At the same time, a major drawback to all open-ended questions on social research instruments, and especially to questions as hugely open-ended as these, leads to difficulties in coding these answers for further analysis; the virtually limitless range of possible responses to the two items listed could render statistical analysis and even a basic summation of the different positions represented by respondents almost impossible (Maxfield & Babbie 2008, pp. 173).

Coding also requires interpretation, which introduces the distinct possibility of misunderstanding a respondent's true intent, and there is also an issue in the possibility that responses will not directly address the research question for which the instrument was created (Maxfield & Babbie 2009, pp. 173). The phrasing of the questions -- specifically the use of the word "support," could also lead to bias (people might view a negative response as failing to support their community, and be more inclined to answer positively) (Maxfield & Babbie 2009, pp. 175).

To address these issues, the items on the questionnaire can be made both more specific and less biased, with "do you like the idea of…" or another less biased phrasing replacing the request for a show of "support." The research methodology itself -- that is, the method of distributing an collecting the questionnaires -- also has some strengths and some room for improvement.

On the positive side, the wide distribution of the questionnaires (that were presumably mailed to all resident addresses in the City of Coquitlam) ensures that everyone in the community had the opportunity to weigh in on the issue, and increases the data pool (assuming the response rate was high enough) to enable some reliable and valid conclusions to be drawn. Social research issues aside, this broad distribution is also the best way to serve the principles of democracy and community-based decision-making.

On the other hand, there is also a greater chance for purposeful error in the completion of the questionnaire when it is mailed to every address, and the lack of targeting that this methodology employs (or rather, the fact that it almost entirely fails to target the population to be serviced) means that even the valid responses received might not actually provide the best answer to the research question (Maxfield & Babbie 2009, pp. 182; 186; 172).

People that already fail to frequent the park maintained by the City of Coquitlam, or that do not have children, are much less likely to approve of the city using additional funding for a service that they will not utilize, and while an argument could be made that their lack of use should be.