Update on Project Activities
This week was also spent canvassing. Each group tried to diversify times in order to get a different response crowd. Michelle & Shikha: We plan on doing our canvassing shift this Saturday afternoon. We will be using two iPads and interviewing in the same area of Menlo Park (businesses along the Santa Cruz and El Camino intersection) as there were many small businesses whose managers and workers we didn’t reach in our last shift. A Saturday may have more foot traffic and constant streams of businesses, but it may not have a “peak” crowded time, so going back and forth between businesses will be easier. We plan to go back to two of our interviewees to get some first-person details about their ability to live and/or work near Menlo Park. We may also consider getting some responses from families who live in the area, as understanding what Menlo Park wants is also crucial. Yesenia & Sarah: We went canvassing along Santa Cruz Ave on Thursday, Nov 1 at about 1:40 pm. We split up because Sarah had the only iPad that was charged. Yesenia collected one last paper survey that was left during the previous canvassing round. Yesenia then decided to charge the iPad in a Starbucks, while Sarah finished her shift at about 2:30 pm. Yesenia continue surveying from 3:15 to 4:15 pm. She was only able to get one survey response as many store workers were either i) occupied with customers ii) talking with each other iii) didn’t feel comfortable filling out the survey while on the job. Sarah was able to collect around 7 surveys total, but realized that there was an influx of people from work/school who started to populate the area around 2pm. Next week, Sarah will be interviewing the people of Bow Wow Meow, whose owner has graciously agreed to have the workers in-shop next Thursday fill out the form, with the potential of a spoken testimony. Katie & Justin: We went canvassing along Santa Cruz Avenue Thursday, November 1st around 8:00 to 9:30 pm. We went as a pair since Katie had a hot spot on her phone and Justin needed to use it to administer the surveys as well. Our goal was to focus on restaurants and businesses that were winding down at this hour. In total we got under 10 surveys. We mostly wanted to experiment with alternative times to avoid major rushes. We surveyed Juban, a Japanese restaurant, Baskin Robins, and Walgreens, but had trouble getting ahold of folks who were busy working in the kitchen. We left surveys at Subway and an ice cream parlor. Katie administered surveys through the iPad and Justin administered surveys through an iPad and paper (when out of range from Katie’s hotspot). What We Observed and Learned In terms of connecting our work to the class readings, urban agriculture is not within the scope of our project. However, the idea of urban resilience brought up the idea of community trust and social capital, which is valuable to Menlo Park. When surveying managers in Menlo Park, many showed pride in their businesses and providing for their clientele, despite their complaints about the housing and transportation issues needed to get to the area. The downtown culture of Menlo Park may add to community familiarity, which may have this converse effect of not wanting to create seemingly drastic but necessary changes to downtown that accommodate more workers. There could be some extrapolations between urban resilience and transportation as well. Looking at the “organizational perspective,” a key factor of a well-operating system is one that takes into account public attitudes. Although it could still use more traction, public transport is integrated in the norm of Bay Area communities more than in other California communities, such as the Central Valley or Los Angeles. It’s also a topic of advocacy for TransForm, Friends of Caltrain, and other non-governmental agencies. Creating more accessible public transport therefore fits within social constructs of Bay Area workers and has the mixed use of governmental maintenance and NGO oversight. Our project directly ties into framing the need for improved public transportation, which operates within a resilient organizational framework. Michelle & Shikha: We have no new findings to report this week yet in terms of surveying, but will add our next shifts to next week’s reflection. Yesenia & Sarah: iPads are finicky! Yesenia ran into trouble with charging her iPad, which meant she had to recharge at the local Starbucks while Sarah canvassed. We also have found that people are less inclined to fill out a survey on an iPad due to the small font, hard accessibility for older people, and proximity of interviewers to them while they fill it out. Next week we will retry the paper copies, so that the people who want privacy when filling it out can do so. Since Yesenia had to charge her iPad, she canvassed from 3:15-4:15, which is not a good time because that is peak time for people getting out of work/school to go into Downtown Menlo Park for coffee/food/other goods. Katie & Justin * 8pm-10pm is actually a really difficult shift to do because most businesses are closed and many restaurants are in the process of closing up, thus are not interested in doing surveys (they probably want to go home). For those we were able to talk, we sensed a fatigued tone (in strict contrast to the enthusiasm expressed by people earlier in the day). Not only does this make people less likely to open up personally, but it also could reflect poorly on our study as people view responding as more of a chore. * We did not receive much verbal feedback. Nobody would be potential candidates for testimonies. * We need to print out more spanish speaking surveys/develop an approach that is inclusive of spanish speaking workers who work in the kitchen * Big box stores like Trader Joe's and Walgreens are easier to canvass, but we need to develop solutions to allow for our survey to reach a wide scope of audience. * Some restaurants told us to come back later after people left. When we came back, they would be closed. At first we thought that there was an elusive window just before official closing, but upon further inspection, this window does not really exist, as businesses really start the process of shutting down before they officially close, and have no desire to take an optional survey. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward We look forward to our final week of data collection. Our community partners have expressed quality interactions and data over a fixed number of surveys, though we still hope to get close to our original goal of 100 surveys. We will meet at the end of next week to review conclusions and move into a focused analysis face, though we’ve had preliminary discussions about our conclusions thus far. When we (Katie and Justin) were canvassing, we realized that restaurants in the downtown area like Chef Kwan’s had many workers but because of the fast paced work environment, asking workers, even for just 5 minutes, to fill out the survey was not realistic. We recognize that we cannot interfere with workers’ job duties. Restaurants like these would be better for dropping off a stack of paper surveys and collecting later (even if this has a lower response rate). Stores like Walgreens and Trader Joe’s have more worker flexibility. Katie and Justin plan to go back to Trader Joe’s at night to survey the night shift (before closing). Katie and Justin went to a Chinese restaurant around 9:20. Despite having a large workforce and no customers in the restaurant, the manager did not want us surveying. Katie pointed out afterwards that this response may arise from different cultural beliefs on what is expected at work. Katie spoke with her and dropping off paper surveys may be a possibility. I know from personal experience what it is like to be working late and having to close up. Workers are not happy to see people come in just before closing because it means that it will take longer to finish. There is really no reason for them to stay to answer an optional survey. People may be more than unenthused about helping, but may be actively resentful towards us because they see us as preventing them from getting home on time after a long day, which can fuel deep personal feelings (which challenges our integrity as researchers). In contrast, when going in the middle of the day between rushes, workers have more disposable time, and in fact may want to help. Looking forward to our goal of 100 surveys, we hope to survey about 50 people this upcoming week. This means that each pair has to survey 17 people at least. Using what we learned from our trouble finding available workers to survey this week, we are optimistic that we can achieve this goal by changing our canvassing times to earlier, yet less busy hours. Comments are closed.
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