Urban Fieldwork Flashcards
Route to geographical enquiry
- Identify suitable question for geographical enquiry
- Selecting, measuring and recording data appropriate to the chosen enquiry
- Selecting appropriate ways of processing and presenting fieldwork data
- Describing, analysing and explaining fieldwork data
- Reaching conclusions
- Evaluating the geographical enquiry
Urban fieldwork question
How does the environment quality vary and the land use change with distance from the CBD
Urban Hypothesis
The environmental quality of London improves with distance and the land use changes from commercial to residential as you move away from the CBD
Systematic sampling
Samples are chosen in a regular/ordered way. Evenly or regularly spaced
Advantages of systematic sampling
- No prior knowledge required
- No bias/will be fair
- Don’t need random numbers
Disadvantages of systematic sampling
May lead to misrepresentation of the pattern/population
Stratified sampling
Using known information, the sample size is divided up into categories. Each category is surveyed according to the proportion of their representation within the sample size e.g. 100 people with 80 women and 20 men - a survey of 10 people would require 8 women and 2 men
Advantages of stratified sampling
- Gives an accurate representation of the whole population
- Removes bias
Disadvantages of systematic sampling
- Must have detailed prior knowledge
- May not have access to each category
Random sampling
Sample points selected at random with no pattern or sequence
Advantages of random sampling
- Removes any human bias from the process/will be fair
- No prior knowledge
Disadvantages of random sampling
- Can lead to poor representation of the overall population
- Requires a random number generator
Primary data
First hand data gathered by the researcher using methods such as interviews and questionnaires
Secondary data
Data collected by someone else and found in sources such as books, journal articles and the internet
What urban fieldwork techniques did we use?
- Environmental Quality Survey (EQS)
- Land use survey (RICEPOTS)
- Pedestrian count
- Traffic count
- Questionnaires
- Photographs
What data presentation methods did we use for urban fieldwork data?
- Radial graph/Rose diagram
- Pie chart
- Bar graph
- Line graph
- Scattergraphs
- Flow diagrams
- Annotated photographs
- GIS
- Word clouds
Analyse
Investigate an issue by breaking it down into individual components and making logical, evidence-based connections about the causes and effects or interrelationships between the concepts
Evaluate
Measure the value or success of something and ultimately provide a substantiated judgement/conclusion. Review information and then bring it together
What is an Environmental Quality Survey?
It uses an observer’s judgement to assess the environmental quality against a range of indicators. As it is based on personal judgements, data is subjective
What is a Likert scale?
A sliding scale (1 to 5) representing less good to good
What is a bipolar scale?
(-5 to 5) Indicates negative through positive assessment with 0 being neither good nor bad
What is a Land Use Survey?
Along each of the transects use a systematic sampling strategy to select locations to record land use function. Land use is categorised for ease of analysis, a popular way of doing this is the RICEPOTS system. Secondary data from the land registry can be helpful here.
What makes a good questionnaire?
- Limited number of questions
- Carefully worded so that respondents are clear on the meaning of each question
- Follows a logical sequence
- Avoids personal questions
- Begins with the quickest questions, leaving the longer ones till last
- Uses mainly closed questions with some open questions
What are the disadvantages of a questionnaire?
- Many people will not want to cooperate
- People might not give accurate answers as they might want to provide “correct” answers
