Doing Surveys

Here are two ways to do interviews to support an article about a school issue.

Do both quantifiable and non-quantifiable interviews--that is,   brief interviews with a large number of people that yield answers (such as yes or no answers) which you can total and compare (the kind of surveys you see in newspapers), and also short interviews using �open� questions with a few people that will give you some good quotes to use.

Quantifiable interviews. Choose a fairly large sample.  You can get 100 answers to a few questions in a few hours if you hit people as they�re leaving class (better than going to class  when they�re in a hurry), lunch break, after 4:00.   Try to vary the time and place at which you are doing the survey. If you only ask questions in the Champlain building, you may get a disproportionate amount of first year students and omit advanced studio students in many departments. Plan to get a certain proportion of your answers in different buildings.

 

Use �filter questions� to weed out a responses that are not likely to be informative or which skew the results. For example,yo u want to get both commuter students and resident students. If about 1/4 of the full time students are residents, be sure resident students are not  half of your respondents. Ask everyone if they live in a school residence to filter out a disproportionate number of residents. (Unless, of course, your paper is about residence life!)

 

Be very careful how you formulate your questions. You will be surprised at how difficult it is to word questions so that they are not ambiguous or easy to misinterpret. If you like, you can run them by me. If you send me an email with questions, mark the email urgent (look for the command in your email program that does this).

 

Word your questions so that they elicit either a Yes or No answer or an answer that is otherwise quantifiable (�all the time, mostof the time, sometimes, not at all, �  for example.) If you are surveying how much people spend on art supplies compared to, food, or  cigarettes or alchol in one week, your questions might look like:  $0.00 to $20.00, $20 to $40, $40-$60. (Note that you have to know something already to formulate the questions--maybe you need to ask, $0-$50, $50-$100, $100-$150...) Or you may want to gauge attitudes with questions worded:  �Strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree.� One person who did a survey on drug use at the school asked people if they used illegal drugs   �every day, once a month , once a week, every day.�  The answers were quantifiable, but the answers are not as informative as they could be, since the questions don�t distinguish between marijuana and cocaine, once a week or more than once a week from once a month, or between one joint a day and 5.

 

Getting Quotes for your article:

Select a few people who  are likely to give interesting or entertaining answers.  If you�re investigating the state of the �state of the art� technology at the school, ask a faculty member, staff employee, senior or grad student�not just a first year student, though a first year student may have a useful perspective. But remember that staff employees may be less likely to speak freely! If you are surveying the school community for their reaction to the Brooklyn Museum of Art controversy over the �Sensation� exhibit, ask some faculty who are likely to travel around; but don�t expect interesting answers from students who are not likely to have seen the exhibit or read about it. If you are writing about some current issue in the art world, be sure to ask faculty in the art history/criticism department who teaches a course in the subject area, or someone in photography if it�s a question about photo, etc.  Or if there�s a piece on Bill Viola in the issue, why not interview video faculty and students (especially grad students) for their ideas about his work?

 

With open questions, be sure to get the person�s name and brief identifying information (such as year at school, type of art the person does). Get contact phone numbers or email addresses if you think you might want to follow up later with more questions.