Survey Bias - RL questions
Once again I throw myself on the mercy of the flist/dwircle. So, I volunteered to represent box office on the new Diversity working party in our offices. We're discussing a lot of things about recruitment, programming, audiences etc. And also about how we can show (govt, funding bodies) that the audience is diverse or is becoming more diverse. Our systems have two fields we don't use: marital status and gender. (Also an under 26yo box but that's because of free ticket eligibility). We've never officially surveyed the audiences before but now we need to, on some things. We haven't talked about data collection (methods, fields, storage) yet, but we will. And when I raised "hey 'gender' may be the wrong term and male/female is definitely wrong" I was asked what I had an issue with :( I explained, and was then asked to go away and think about ways to do it better before the next meeting. More work yay.
So. Again. Assuming for a moment that the data collection is not an ill in itself (our audience is really white older middle class) anyone have any thoughts about how to make it less offensive? Any questions you're always asked on forms that make you stab through the page? Or any resources/examples of doing it right? It'll probably look something like the recruitment forms which are gender (male/female), ethnic origin (white, asian, black, other - all with further breakdowns), do you consider yourself to be a disabled person. So it doesn't ask age, sexual orientation, religion or marital status, which are also part of the Diversity umbrella. That may changed. Plus those forms are detached from applications/not attached to sales. I'm not sure how comfortable people would be attaching that info to their ticket history. I'd like to go to the directors with 'no, these are better/right questions to ask and here's why'. And the best way to ask people without creating the usual survey problem that is an underrepresentation of anyone in a minority within the group.
Obviously, share what you want to share. No obligation, let me know if I've misspoke somewhere.
This entry was originally posted at http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/131366.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
So. Again. Assuming for a moment that the data collection is not an ill in itself (our audience is really white older middle class) anyone have any thoughts about how to make it less offensive? Any questions you're always asked on forms that make you stab through the page? Or any resources/examples of doing it right? It'll probably look something like the recruitment forms which are gender (male/female), ethnic origin (white, asian, black, other - all with further breakdowns), do you consider yourself to be a disabled person. So it doesn't ask age, sexual orientation, religion or marital status, which are also part of the Diversity umbrella. That may changed. Plus those forms are detached from applications/not attached to sales. I'm not sure how comfortable people would be attaching that info to their ticket history. I'd like to go to the directors with 'no, these are better/right questions to ask and here's why'. And the best way to ask people without creating the usual survey problem that is an underrepresentation of anyone in a minority within the group.
Obviously, share what you want to share. No obligation, let me know if I've misspoke somewhere.
This entry was originally posted at http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/131366.html. Please comment there using OpenID.