I am loving this new piece.
It has been a difficult and rather tense week, all things considered, but I have a reasonable number of votes, thanks to my understanding friends on twitter and facebook.
Definitely well worth doing. As someone who worked in research jobs for twenty odd years, between my alternative investigations into banking, utilities, engineering and the NHS in Scotland, my decision to make a survey which was not boring and which had recognisable themes has paid off rather well for the speed of results gathering and most of the attention it attracted.
What we should end up with is a picture of motivation, idealism, economic awareness and flexibility amongst a small sample of the Scottish population. The fact that we cannot do anything on the scale of the original survey is unfortunate, but I wanted to give you a snapshot of what is right and what is wrong, and what we need to tweak to improve life for everybody no matter what happens.
These surveys cost money. Only the first one hundred answers are free on surveymonkey, in case you ever do one of these, after this you need to pay to get the results you went out and got, which is rather annoying, but I will sort it out tomorrow hopefully and then we should have an idea how best to unite, so to speak, rather than remaining a divided and conquered nation. More information is always a good thing, especially when it comes to communication in Scotland.
If you are thinking of doing something similar, be aware that it does not matter how bland or clinical you make it, you will get much the same armchair criticism as surveys are boring and tiresome and people get restless after the first ten questions, so you need to be incisive and keep it short. Even then, there are always pedants with ideas which bear no resemblance to the ones you actually want to hear about. About one in twenty people will give you twice as much information as you want, and then tell you how to do your job. Some people assume that they are stupid, so you need to provide a little relaxation in the form of levity or outrage to get the best results, so that the ice is nice and smashed.
A much larger sample of no voters would have been nice, but I did try approaching them personally as well as via general tweets, and they seem to be remarkably shy and/or unmotivated to answer any questions. They need to be provided with this information as well, so that they can make an informed decision, so do not assume that this is a one-sided thing.
Again, thank you very much, all who helped get the word out, and I will go through the results as soon as I liberate them from the collection box on surveymonkey.
Ina
