URBS 502—Survey Design Assignments


Write a professional memo, responding to one of the following questions:

 

1.  Develop  (1) an experimental design, (2) a quasi-experimental design, and (3) a correlational or observational design to test the hypotheses about an issue that interests you.  Each design should test a different one of your hypotheses.

 

2. The Funders’ Network for Smart Growth, in “Civic participation and smart growth” (Nov, 2000), writes that:

“Putnam argues that sprawl is not the primary culprit for what he views as the country’s lessening social capital, but has been a ‘significant contributor to civic disengagement.’  He cites three reasons:  first, sprawl and the consequent need to drive to most places takes time that could be used for civic purposes; second, sprawl leads to increased social homogeneity in communities, by class and race, which appears to result in reduced civic participation; and third, sprawl leads to the physical fragmentation of communities and our daily lives, which undercuts involvement in local affairs.” (p.2)

Design three studies to test these three hypotheses (one should be experimental, one quasi-experimental, one correlational/observational).

 

3.  The Funders’ Network for Smart Growth in “Children, Youth and Families and Smart Growth” (August, 2002) make a number of assertions:

·        “Families are drawn to cul-de-sacs primarily because the dead-end streets are thought to be safe havens for traffic.” (p.4)

·        “The proliferation of cul-de-sacs makes the world beyond the subdivision entrance doubly dangerous.  The lack of interconnected streets means every subdivision and shopping center empties onto the same overloaded arterial road, which inevitably is widened and reconfigured to accommodate a higher volume of speeding vehicles.  As a result, even young adolescents, who need a degree of autonomy for their development, are all but barred from leaving the subdivision without a chauffeur-chaperone.”  (p. 4)

·        “…a large share of American families have moved to neighborhoods designed only for cars, where kids often are prohibited from walking to school or anywhere else for fear of the high-speed traffic beyond the cul-de-sac.  That means children don’t often get the incidental exercise they once did, such as running to the corner store for Mom, hiking to the library or walking to school.”  (p. 5)

·        “In many ways, of course, middle class kids are the lucky ones, because their parents have the means to drive them to activities in our auto-dependent cities.  Lower-income families, with one or fewer cars, are not able to haul children to sports, music, or other enrichment activities…(these) kids just miss out.” (p. 6)

·        Eric Schlosser, in Fast Food Nation (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), argues, “As American cities and towns spend less money on children’s recreation, fast food restaurants have become gathering places for families with young children.”

Choose one or more of these hypotheses and design an experimental, quasi-experimental, and correlational/observational study to test it (them).

4.  Consider the MRAP Proposal to the EPA, and presume your task is #3 (Interrelationships Between the Basin’s Diverse “Cultures” and Basin Policy Decisions).  Design a survey to provide data for this stage of the process.

 

MSU

 

© 2006 A.J.Filipovitch
Revised 5 October 2008