{"id":234,"date":"2020-02-05T14:00:19","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T14:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/?p=234"},"modified":"2020-02-05T14:00:19","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T14:00:19","slug":"blog-post-2-designing-surveys-there-is-more-to-surveys-than-filling-bubbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/blog\/2020\/02\/05\/blog-post-2-designing-surveys-there-is-more-to-surveys-than-filling-bubbles\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Post #2: Designing Surveys: There Is More To Surveys Than Filling Bubbles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\">There Is More To Surveys Than Filling Bubbles<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Diversity in the United States has made collecting accurate demographics that can represent the whole United States from a small population a challenging ordeal. As a result, survey making has become a complicated process as writers try to phrase and organize the questions in a manner that will not ruin the validity of the survey by influencing the results. Wording aside, there are many factors that influence the answers of individuals, the most important of which are gender, race, and social class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While recent changes in the United States have narrowed the gap between men and women in the social structure, gender still has a noticeable impact on the way people experience the world, therefore, changing their answers for the survey. According to the sociology professor, Anna Leon-Guerrero, \u201cthere is no society where men and women perform identical functions, nor are they ranked or treated equally\u201d (1). In other words, the persistent gender gap affects the way individuals are treated and the degree to which different problems affect them. For example, working women in 2016 still receive only eighty percent of what their counterpart men were paid. Furthermore, women are still the minority in many career fields and more likely to be victims of sexual assault or relationship violence. As a result, when asked on a survey to rank social problems women might be more inclined to choose the pay gap than men who struggle with different societal problems.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_242\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-242\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-242 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/money-articleLarge-300x187.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/money-articleLarge-300x187.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/money-articleLarge.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-242\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The gender pay gap and the limitations in career choices affect women&#8217;s views on various topics. (Photo by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/11\/15\/business\/keeping-a-vigilant-eye-on-pay-equity-for-women.html\">The New York Times<\/a>)<span style=\"font-size: 16px\">\u00a0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Other influences to survey answers come from race and social class, which are two interconnected social problems. Basically, race is directly connected to housing, schooling, political power, income, and personal values. Furthermore, people of high social class tend to come from cerian races, furthering the divide of opinions between the rich and poor. In other words, the \u2018undesired\u2019 races often have different worldviews from the \u2018superior\u2019 races since they rarely share the same neighborhoods, public schools, and social classes. Therefore it should come as no surprise that race and social class influence survey answers in matters concerning welfare, housing discrimination, wages, and political opinions. As a matter of fact, race and social class are often targeted as a means of changing survey answers. In the years 1993 to 1994, \u201cGovernor Zell Miller\u2026.ignited racial tension and racialized the state\u2019s political discourse\u2026.[by] shift[ing] his attention from the state flag to welfare reform\u2026.[so] Georgia passed\u2026.punitive welfare programs\u201d (1). In this instance, race was intentionally used to polarize people&#8217;s answers to the welfare question and halt the reform efforts. In essence, race and social class will undoubtedly influence survey answers in a variety of subjects especially if the questions are written in a provoking manner or at a time of racial tension.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_239\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-239\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-239 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/We_want_white_tenants-300x238.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"238\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/We_want_white_tenants-300x238.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/We_want_white_tenants.jpg 509w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-239\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">While now illegal, housing and schooling segregation by race still continues informally and affects world views (by <a href=\"https:\/\/washingtonmonthly.com\/magazine\/junejulyaugust-2017\/why-segregated-neighborhoods-persist\/\">Washington Monthly<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Overall, gender, race, and social class definitely impact the world view of individuals and their answers to survey questions, which is why survey takers rarely agree on the answers to the questions asked. However, careful wording and considerate questions can help ease the tension and wield valuable data that could not be collected by qualitative research. Moreover, placing sensitive questions at the end of the survey instead of at the start reduces the influence of those sensitive questions on the rest of the survey.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Footnotes:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">1. Leon-Guerrero, Anna. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Social Problems: Community, Policy and Social Action<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. 6th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There Is More To Surveys Than Filling Bubbles Diversity in the United States has made collecting accurate demographics that can represent the whole United States<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Question-Answer.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh-wordpress.ramapo.edu\/SSI-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}