taliv
to theeconomist: it was obvious to me that the list was what you were tryign to answer, and not the actual questions you intended to put on the survey. i guess my advice would be to be honest with the surveyees about what you really intend to do with the info. is this a project for a college class? is it because you have some political ax to grind? who is sponsoring it? is it by someone in your community for your community and you plan to distribute the results only to people in your community? are you going to send the data off to the NRA or brady's or the local news station? i'm guessing you're just trying to get your neighbors to realize how many of them are gun owners, but who knows?
i wouldn't put a lot of effort into securing a website. my recommendation would be to do a reverse lookup of telephone numbers by street address, and call each of the neighbors. or, better yet, attend the next homeowners association meeting and present the idea of a survey to them. you'll know right away whether it will be well received or get people all hot and bothered. ask them for suggestions about how they'd rather respond and you'll get better turnout
This is part of some data gathering I'm trying to do for an economics paper I'm writing. The working title so far is "'Guns Carried' - Private Provision of a Public Good" or something around that. Nope, the info isn't intended to go to Brady or the NRA and I certainly wouldn't be collecting or reporting individual information on ownership. This survey in particular was/is part of an attempt to get a small idea of average gun-ownership in households - and do separate surveys in separate neighborhoods separated by approximated income level (lower/middle/upper/super-wealthy/etc). My university is somewhat sponsoring some of what I'm doing, but mostly it's being financed (whatever little financing it's needed thusfar) by me. No political ax to grind. Like I said in a previous thread about this paper, I'm trying to take a neutral standpoint on it and whatever I find is what I find - whether I like it personally or not. I'm hoping it will turn out one way, but I'm not going to make up data to support my personal opinion (pro-gun obviously). Depending upon how well the paper turns out (quality wise) I might send it off to see if anybody wants to publish it, or if nothing else I'd probably post it online if I feel I can be proud of it (as in - it's well-written and researched). No news stations though.... I'm not the NRA, or Brady, or any pro or anti group.... (well, actually that's not entirely true as I am an NRA member - but you get the point) nor am I the FBI or any government organization. Just an academically inclined type who happens to have an interest in guns.
The questions ultimately would not be exactly as I phrased them. For example, I'd if nothing else explain what HR1022 is, etc. so people would know what the heck I'm talking about.
As for the questions, there's two reasons I want to keep the questions yes/no. The first is that I don't want to deal with any central-tendency problem - but that's not usually as much of a problem on non-subjective questions. The second though is the statistical methods involved. By keeping things yes/no, I can keep things simple (binomial).
As for my neighbors knowing how many guns there are? Well, considering the fact that people seem to be opposed (here at least) to the survey idea, I don't think I'd make the poll results immediately available (perhaps overall data could be given to a participant upon request? if it was just aggregate that is). More importantly though, these aren't my neighbors. Maybe I'll use my neighborhood too, but I'd like to get a larger sample than that.
The one thing that has me a bit confused is how here so many say that they're proud to be a gun owner, yet if it came down to saying yes/no on an anonymous survey about whether they own a gun, they'd not answer? That's dissapointing. If people at THR wouldn't answer, then there's no hope whatsoever it would seem for the average Joe to answer.
as for cold-calling, isn't that illegal for me to do? Especially with the do-not-call list? Or does that only apply to advertisers?
I only have questions.... not answers.... so I wouldn't be selling anything.
So far it seems this paper is going to be a lot harder than I thought.