Direct Approach - Formal Survey
The goal of the formal survey is to find residents both those who live in the community, and those who frequently visit the area and extract specific, applicable, and actionable data. As stated previously, the danger with this approach is accumulating “convenient” answers; when put on the spot, interviewees are likely to give answers which they believe we want to hear in order to advance the interview and not appear to be uncultured or uninformed, or to avoid putting their neighborhood in a negative, potentially embarrassing, light. It takes a skilled interviewer to dance around these answers to get at deeper and more closely held convictions; these are skills which are honed and developed over time, skills that, I must admit, as novice engagers we lack. This deficit of skill is in part the reason why we utilized our three-pronged approach to engagement.
Asking specific questions and having a stable of follow up questions on hand to engage the residents will allow us to gain insight into the specific issues drawn from our own bank of personal knowledge as ethical practitioners as well as the numerous topics brought up in previous engagements which we believe will help us, as we design a master plan for the site, address the community needs more directly. These specific answers will help to establish a framework to structure future projects and influence material interventions. We chose two locations to pursue participants, Amaranth Bakery and Washington Park, with the assumption being that two locations would allow us access to a wider swath of community residents, thus helping us achieve a fuller picture of the community proper. |
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