SF0 / katotoro / Survey Creation/Distribution/Collation

45 + 55 points

Survey Creation/Distribution/Collation by Cthulhu Kitty

January 29th, 2007 10:20 PM

INSTRUCTIONS: Create a survey or questionnaire of at least 10 questions of vital importance to a certain group or demographic: this could be security moms, NASCAR dads, San Francisco pedestrians, graduate students, white collar professionals, you name it. These questions may take the multiple-choice, open-ended, true/false, or classic strongly agree/strongly disagree formats.

Distribute the survey to at least 20 strangers in this group with instructions on how to send it back to you - whether via post, email, or carrier pigeon, it doesn't matter. Make broad, sweeping generalizations based on the data you've acquired and describe your findings here. Bonus points for charts and graphs.

As a fairly liberal individual (okay, peace loving hippie flower child) in the military, I often find it a challenge to express my thoughts and opinions on political issues. Of course, right now, one of the biggest political issues involving the military is the war in Iraq. Almost everyone has some sort of opinion in regard to this, but being in the military does impose some restrictions on your ability to express that opinion. Specifically, there are many rules and regulations governing political beliefs. For example, a military member cannot participate in any sort of demonstration, or even appear at the site of a demonstration while in uniform. Nor can we express negative opinions about anyone in our chain of command, including the President. Knowing this, I generally keep my views to myself and work subtly from within the military structure in order to attempt to enlighten people about alternative views and ideas. This task gave me the perfect way to do just this. I decided to gear my survey based on an article I had recently read in the Stars and Stripes about military members signing a petition to end the war in Iraq (More than 1,000 service members sign petition to end Iraq war.) What struck my interest even more than the article itself were the subsequent letters to the editor (seven over 5 days) in response to this article. The majority of these letters expressed the belief that any military member who signed this petition was wrong for doing so. I decided to create a survey to see if this opinion was shared by fellow service members stationed in Baghdad. Below is the orginal survey:

1. I support the President’s decision to send a “surge” of troops to Iraq.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

2. I believe extra troops will help bring an end to the war in Iraq sooner.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

3. I joined the military in order to participate in the war against terrorism.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

4. The American public is not supportive of me as a military member.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

5. The American public wants an end to the war in Iraq.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

6. It is wrong for Military members to advocate an end to the war in Iraq.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

7. I am proud of my role in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

8. I volunteered to come to serve a tour of duty in Iraq.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

9. I believe my tour in Iraq is too long.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

10. The military cares about the morale of troops in Iraq.

A. strongly agree B. agree C. disagree D. strongly disagree

Additional comments:

Before dispersing this survey, I consulted with a legal officer to make sure that I would not be violating any regulations. It was suggested that I throw out the first question as technically, all service members are required to support the President. In addition, I had to ensure that the survey would remain completely anonymous. This meant that I would not be able to request any sort of personal information data such as age, gender, etc. I received 30 completed surveys, the results of which are as follows:

Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree Don’t know
2. 6 8 6 8 2
3. 5 4 15 6 0
4. 0 1 8 21 0
5. 13 16 1 0 0
6. 5 9 13 3 0
7. 23 7 0 0 0
8. 17 7 3 3 0
9. 4 5 12 9 0
10. 5 15 4 3 3

Now for the tables and sweeping generalizations. (easy to do since there's limited data.)

As you can see by the three pictures, I tried to group similar questions together in order to compare results.

The only result that really surprised me was that dealing with the one question that inspired my survey. I thought that there would be a lot more opposition to military folks voicing "negative" opinions about the military. I was also surprised that out of the 32 people I approached with my survey, only two refused to participate.

- smaller

Support

These questions attempted to obtain the service member's perception of support. The consensus appears to be that the American public is quite supportive whereas there are some doubts as to the support level offered by the military structure.

General Opinions

This grouping was just my way of throwing together some miscellaneous questions including the one I was really interested in (number three.) Once again, the perception of the American public is pretty much the same across the board. As far as whether or not service members feel it is okay to advocate an end to the war, the opinion seems pretty divided, but with more passion reserved for the negative opinion.

Pride / Motivation

These questions focused on service members' feelings about serving in Iraq. Although the war in Iraq does not appear to be the motivation for joining the military, it also does not appear to be a barrier to serving.

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