Help me out with my research project:: Take a brief survey


Off-Topic Discussions


Hey there. I post a lot on the boards directly relating to Pathfinder, but now I'm here because I was hoping some of the people in our wonderful community would be willing to help me out.

For one of my classes I'm writing a research paper on bystander intervention and religious intolerance. I need at least 100 survey responses and I'm at about 40 so far. Please take it if you have the time (should take about 5 minutes) and thank you.

5 minute survey


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For chaoseffect only, in an attempt to prevent bias on the part of other survey-takers:

Spoiler:
For the questions involving calling the police, what if I chose not to call the police because I believed that calling the police would exacerbate the situation, and instead chose to peacefully confront the assailant myself?


David M Mallon wrote:

For chaoseffect only, in an attempt to prevent bias on the part of other survey-takers:

** spoiler omitted **

Thanks a lot for taking the time here, and in response to your other question:

Response:
If the possible choices didn't correspond to your rationale, then it is a weakness in my survey design. It also brings up some issues with the "confront" phrasing as that can be viewed ambiguously as you pointed out.

As the survey is already out I can't do much about it now except point out the issues of my instrument in my conclusions. Thank you for the feedback though; it's definitely something I have to consider for the limitations of my study.


I successfully filled out your survey.

Spoiler:

I said don't look!

For several of the answers I had to choose the least worse answer. For example I wouldn't confront someone threatening violence, nor would I intervene (unless I believed it was life threatening) because I have none the training necessary to do that.

BTW the religion was immaterial to any of my answers. I would react the same if the victim were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Mormon, or worshiped the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Spoilered out to prevent bias, so don't look.

Liberty's Edge

Very interesting, but I did not send it in the end because I feel that my being French (and living in France) might disrupt the results of your survey, which is likely aimed at US society.


chaoseffect wrote:
David M Mallon wrote:

For chaoseffect only, in an attempt to prevent bias on the part of other survey-takers:

** spoiler omitted **

Thanks a lot for taking the time here, and in response to your other question:

** spoiler omitted **

Along that note:

Spoiler:
I had to select "I was afraid"/"It was beyond my control" for the questions about confronting someone in the second and third scenarios, where someone was being threatened or assaulted. More accurate might have been "I am not capable of defending myself against an armed opponent" or something similar.


notes: question 1 , leaves off "i'll handle it myself" as an obvious answer. No problem is so bad that management can't make it worse.

Question 2, similar to 1. Good chance the cop agrees with the shouter...

Question 3: one wonders how Im identifying a Muslim by sight. If they have a turban they're a sihk.

When danger is imminent, the police are only a minutes away!


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Question 3: one wonders how Im identifying a Muslim by sight. If they have a turban they're a sihk.

The way I read the question it was more the attacker was accusing them of being one.

A lot of biased people assume "appears vaguely Middle-Eastern" = "must be a Muslim".

Liberty's Edge

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A lot of the times, the answers didn't fit my reasoning.

I'd be kinda averse to starting a big foofaraw at work because it doesn't usually end up helping necessarily, just causing backfire and flack; however, somebody who I'm 100% certain is just using fists in the night I'm going to probably call the cops then fight them. That 100% certainty doesn't exist in real life though. Too many people pack heat, and that would probably make me less likely to insert myself into the situation.

I'm not sure if that's "fear" motivating me or "common sense."


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I ended up giving the same answer to pretty much every question.

chaoseffect, please do not take this the wrong way... but your survey is the kind of survey that irritates me. I have no idea why it's considered a tool; you're less likely to get accurate data than the Sun is to explode in the five seconds.

The problem is that surveys like this tend to involve reasoning for interventions that, ultimately, don't actually fit the mindsets of most people. They will fit some, but not enough. When that happens, most people will pick an inaccurate answer that is somewhat close or just choose randomly. Just the mere fact you include reasons why as options introduces bias and guides the thinking of the test taker down paths it probably wouldn't go down. Also, it introduces a bit of confirmation bias, in that it makes inaction associated with items that would normally be considered negative (thus implying that the reasoning of the person taking it may be biased) in such a situation and action taken to help associated with religious tolerance. In neither case are you going to get results that do not add onto a predetermined outcome, making it a case of the entire study being about which of the conclusions you want to put in your paper as the one most supported.

Sovereign Court

Finished the survey, a question

Spoiler:

Why only muslims?

Plus, what MagusJanus said. You need to REFINE the survey. A lot. And ask meaningful questions.

Liberty's Edge

Could the questions be more open ended maybe?


Starfinder Superscriber

Sure, doing it


Heathansson wrote:

Too many people pack heat, and that would probably make me less likely to insert myself into the situation.

I'm not sure if that's "fear" motivating me or "common sense."

This was my issue as well.

Silver Crusade

I feel that I could not give an honest assesment due to the fact that there are way to many variables in those situations.


Completed.

I only had one problem with a question:

Spoiler:
The one about the man shouting at a Muslim in a parking lot, I wouldn't call the police because I'm not sure that's illegal, thus not a police issue. There was no appropriate explanatory answer available.


Thank you to everyone who participated here and for the comments.

Responses:

In general I'm seeing a lot of issues with rationale not being covered, so that's definitely something I'm going to have to make prominent in the area of my paper that deals with the limitations of the research.

@BigNorseWolf - yeah I can see your point about "how do I know." I was thinking of it along the lines of Orthos's comment personally, like the harassment is taking place because of perceived religion. If it confused you though, then that's bad design on my part.

@MagusJanus - No offense taken, I appreciate the feedback; I know I'm no expert on study design. I was trying to quantify the scale of a previous open ended study that used open ended questions, which appears to be a mistake now.

@Hama - Mostly logistical reasons. I couldn't ask about different religions for each question as that could confound the results, but at the same time people wouldn't be willing to essentially take that survey multiple times just with different religious groups in place. I went with Muslims because they are currently the most obviously prejudiced against religious group in the U.S.

@Heathansson - That probably would have been better. I tried to make it more quantitative (more running statistics to get a result) than qualitative (more interpretative), but the scale was based on a qualitative study... which appears to have led to many issues.

@Tin Foil Yamakah - I'm not sure I understand exactly; do you mean the scenarios should have had more detail to eliminate ambiguity?

Silver Crusade

chaoseffect wrote:

Thank you to everyone who participated here and for the comments.

** spoiler omitted **

Yes. But I know it is practically impossible to do that.

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