Human Fieldwork

Question 1

LOCATION

Answer 1

Plymouth, Located in county of Devon
City in the SW of the UK
Located on the South coast
CBD, Mount Wise (inner city) and Hartley (suburbs) selected using stratified sampling.

Question 2

Physical Feature of area studied -

Answer 2

Located on mouth of River Plym and Tamar and is on the south coast so growth of city only in a northwards direction.

Question 3

Human Features of area studied -

Answer 3

Population of 264,700 (2021 census)
Population density = 3300 persons per square kilometre

Question 4

EVALUATION - Justification of location

Answer 4

1 - Large enough to see variations
2 - Small enough to collect data in one day
3 - Safety - Easy to navigate/mobile phone signal

Question 5

1) As you move away from the CBD, the quality of the environment will improve.

Answer 5

Expectation = The amount of green spaces is higher in the suburbs than in the CBD and Inner City areas. Houses are a better quality and the people who live here are wealthier so will keep their properties well-maintained.

Question 6

2) As you move away from the CBD of Plymouth, land use (e.g. housing, retail, industry) will change.

Answer 6

Expectation – In line with Burgess model, CBD expected to be solely for economic activity. Inner city expected to be more residential of a terraced kind/high rise flats due to cost of land. Suburbs expected to be dominated by detached and semi detached residential housing due to cheaper land allowing for bigger houses.

Question 7

1) One method = Land use survey (Quantitative)
Description = Each building was categorised into one of 8 categories for example 1 = Detached housing, 6= green spaces.
This was carried out along 8 streets selected using systematic sampling technique, in the three areas of Hartley, Mount Wise and Central Business District, selected using stratified sampling.

Answer 7

Evaluation
+ Helps to answer hypothesis 2 about how use of land changed
+ Large amount of data collected across three areas which allowed for comparison
- Categorisation not always simplistic, sometimes too broad for more detailed comparison
- Not all streets included

Question 8

2) Second method = Epitome Words – small questionnaire (Qualitative)
Description = to find the public opinion of the areas that they live in.

Answer 8

Evaluation
+ Helped answer hypothesis 1.
+ could clearly see words that were more common.
- Bias due to the people being asked. More likely to ask elderly people as they are less threatening to approach and who the largest demographic available.
- Data is limited by willingness to approach people.

Question 9

One method = Word Cloud
Description – the responses were recorded into a Google Form which was then used to create the word cloud. Repeated words were represented larger.

Answer 9

Evaluation
+ Allowed for displaying of qualitative data
+ Clearly able to see more common responses which is useful for analysis.
- Not all groups used the form properly so responses may be missing.
- Cannot extrapolate raw data (e.g. how many people said the same word)

Question 10

2) Another method = GIS
Description – ArcGIS was used to plot the zones where data was collected, creating a choropleth map of Plymouth.

Answer 10

Evaluation:
+ Can clearly see the zones where data was collected in each area.
- Cannot extrapolate raw data
- Tricky to use so not everyone completed it.

Question 11

1) One type use of secondary data = Census Data

Description – From office of national statistics using the data shine website.

Answer 11

Evaluation:
+ Used to validate own data collected for hypothesis 2 e.g. number of types of houses in area.
- Not up- to-date, uses 2011 not 2021.
- Not exactly the areas studied had data e.g. ‘Devonport’ for Mount Wise.

Question 12

2) Another use of secondary data = UK Crime Statistics

Description – Data base of crime statistics

Answer 12

+ Used to answer hypothesis 1 by giving data on crime rates, showing quality of environment.

• Not exact area so can’t make direct comparison

Question 13

Land use Survey
CBD – The GIS map shows there were two main types of land use here, retail and industry.

Answer 13

Mount Wise – The GIS map shows there were three types of land use here, the majority of the land use was flats, with some terraced housing and a small amount of detached housing.

Hartley – This area is predominantly detached housing along with a small amount of terraced housing and some green space.

Question 14

Epitome Words
CBD – Generally words recorded in the word cloud were negative with the most common words ‘busy’, ‘dirty’, ‘derelict’ and ‘sad’.

Answer 14

Mount Wise – A mixture of words were recorded, some positive, some negative. The positive words were ‘beautiful’, ‘community’ and ‘friendly’. Negative words were ‘dirty’, ‘boring’ and ‘worn’.

Hartley – The majority of the words were really positive with words recorded such as ‘quiet’, ‘calm’, ‘clean’ and ‘modern’.

Question 15

Hypothesis 1 = The data tells us that the quality of the environment was highest in the suburbs of Hartley and lowest in the CBD. This supports hypothesis 1.

Answer 15

This finding is probably due to the amount of people using these areas. The CBD has lots of people commuting in every day which means that lots of litter is produced. As the houses are more expensive in Hartley, wealthier people have more money to keep their houses maintained and have pride in keeping their street clean.

Question 16

Hypothesis 2 = The data tells us that the land-use becomes more residential as you move away from the CBD, which is in line with our hypothesis 2 as well as the Burgess Model.

Answer 16

Land in the CBD is very expensive and therefore used for high density buildings e.g. flats or for commercial use who can afford the higher rent prices.
In line with the Burgess model, terraced house in Mount Wise again is as expected due to previous industries that would have been here. Due to proximity to CBD, higher land costs mean housing is of a higher density compared to that of Hartley, where cheaper land prices mean larger houses can be built, at a lower density thereby taking advantage of the green space.

Question 17

Conclusions can be trusted because =

Answer 17

+ Large amount of data collected in 7 areas across 3 locations
+ Variety of methods, both qualitative and quantitative which improves reliability of data.
+ Efforts made to ensure accuracy in data collection which means that the impact of subjectivity and bias is limited.

Question 18

Conclusions can’t be trusted =

Answer 18

• Data only collected on one day at one time. This influences results, such as the number of people available e.g. elderly in the streets, which is heavily influenced by time of day which means that there is a higher proportion of the opinions from these people recorded.
• Data collected from only one time of year. As a seaside and university town, results are likely to be heavily influenced by time of year. Data collection at different points across year are needed to improve reliability.