Urban Fieldwork Flashcards
Fieldwork enquiry question
How does the environmental quality vary and the land use change with distance from the CBD
Hypothesis
The environmental quality of East London improves with distance and the land use changes from commercial to residential as you move away from the CBD
Environmental quality survey
-uses an observer’s judgement to assess environmental quality against a range of indicators
-using a bipolar scales, from -5 to 5
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, using RICEPOTS
Residential
Industrial
Commercial
Entertainment
Public building
Open space
Transport
Services
Features of good questionnaires
-limited number of questions
-carefully worded for clear meaning
-follows a logical sequence
-avoids personal questions
-begins with quick ones, then longer ones at the end
-mainly closed questions, some open questions
Disadvantages of questionnaires
-people may not want to cooperate
-people may not give accurate as they might want to provide the ‘correct’ answers, not the honest ones
Strengths and weaknesses and how to improve EQS
Strengths:
-quick
-lots of diff information
Weak:
-subjective
-lack of perspective and context
How to improve
-more data
-more people without comparing
-average
-do secondary research on conditions
-do on different days
Land use survey pros, cons, improvements
Pros
-answers the research questions
-objective, quick, simple
-no equipment
Cons:
-difficult to categorise multi-purpose buildings
-quite random
Improve:
-more data to mitigate randomness
-use land use registry (more accurate)
Questionnaires pros cons improvements
Pros:
-info from locals, have spent lots of time there
-can get specific context
Cons:
-not all are locals
-might not give honest answers
-time consuming
-subjective to them
-responders ight be the same demographic
Improvement
-spend more time asking
-no leading question to improve accuracy
Pedestrian count pros cons improvements
Pros
-quick, simple, objective
Cons
-difficult to count (errors)
-subjective to the environment e.g. traffic light
-affected by many factors
Improvements:
-do over a longer time
-do on multiple days and average
-video it
-use a clicker
Pros cons and improvements of traffic count
Same as pedestrian count
Pros cons and improvements for photographs
Pros
-can be reviewed, more context
Cons
-only captures what you take, miss out information
-only visual information, does not account smell and other ones
Improvements
-write down notes for more context
Data presentation techniques for each data collection method
EQS: radial chart
Land use survey: composite bar chart
Questionnaire: pie chart for closed Qs, Open: word cloud
Pedestrian: line graphs
Traffic control: stacked bar chart
Pros and cons of radial charts
Pros
-lots of data shown,
-easy to see patterns
Cons
-hard to spot anomalies
-hard to see individual trends
Composite bar chart pros and cons
Pros
-easy to see trends and anomalies
-can see more detail for each area
-easy to compare types of vehicles for each area
Cons
-only two variables
-difficult to judge total of a variable for an area
Line graphs pros and cons
Pros
Easy to see trends and anomalies
Cons
Can only show tow variables
Stacked bar chart pros and cons
Pros
-easy to see trends and anomalies
-easy to compare total number of things per variable
Cons
-difficult to compare types of vehicles per area
-can only show two variables
Annotated photos pros and cons
Pros:
-shows the context in detail that others do not
Cons:
-cannot see trends
-cannot see anomalies
-not quantitative
-only shows what is in the photo
-only visuals, no other senses
