Methodology
During our first meeting with our community partner, they expressed the need for data to inform their outreach efforts. The two important questions they had were how many people knew about the new San Jose HHW Facility and whether or not people knew what items constitute HHW. To collect this data, we developed a survey and translated it into Chinese, Spanish, and Vietnamese so that we could get a sample representative of the diverse ethnic population of San Jose.
We deliberately chose five places/events around San Jose to conduct our survey that would give us a sample that would most accurately match the true ethnic demographics of the city: the Martin Luther King Public Library, the San Jose Flea Market, a McKinley neighborhood meeting, the Vietnamese Tet Festival, and a San Jose Earthquakes soccer game at the new Avaya Stadium. |
At these events, we would approach people, introduce ourselves, and summarize the purpose of our survey. We stressed the importance of Santa Clara County residents’ input on the issue of HHW and emphasized that the local government values its citizens’ feedback. We found that angling our purpose in this way made surveyors more inclined to participate in our survey. However, there were still a number of people who refuse to take the survey.