Research Project - TPO Reviews - Where are we at & where are we going?

[Gary Prentice]

Ah, I meant that with regard to your initial database of contacts.

 

Be careful not to populate your research with too many opinions of the'good people' - it may not give you a representative sample. Those that are proactive respondents might well be proactive with TPO administration. Or worse, bearing an axe for grinding.

 

As for FOI requests being a pain - well, I don't know what to say. Perhaps we should just get rid of them and go back to the good old days...

 

I see know. I could have gone that way or a number of other official ways, but as a bit of an experiment in social networking (ok I was testing the water) I thought I'd try to network around the country. If Mark Johnson got 66% response with the government behind him I thought I needed to try something different. But you have a valid point.

 

Luckily I have enough time to revoke the FOI to get answers if everything else fails - but it will entail loads more work.

 

I'm trying to avoid opinions as much as possible in the final survey. Answers will be factual and produce statistics - similar to TiT2. The survey replies go straight into a spreadsheet so I should be able to identify such things as regional variations, percentage of LPAs with existing review strategies, percentage with plans to review, review timetables, cost of reviewing orders etc

 

I'm a long way off from finalizing the survey, and will have to undergo a number of trial surveys to ensure that everything works and is manageable.

 

When a say that tree people are good people, I mean generally. Over the last two years of studying the response to my (often annoying) enquiries has almost without exception been positive. People like Frank Rinn contacted me personally in response to a request I made to his company, well known arboriculturists from Europe, USA, Hong Kong and elsewhere have generally bent over backwards to help. Personally I think its a good industry with lots of good people in it.

[Kveldssanger]

Gary, what survey site are you using so that it plugs right into a spreadsheet? I'm working on, as you know, a similar survey (though about planting and aftercare), and have certain questions that require the ranking of preference. Wondering how I can get this into a spreadsheet...

 

Was thinking it may be easier to send out a word doc and let people fill that out, and then collate info afterwards into a spreadsheet I created myself.

 

Not a computer wizard, am I.

[Gary Prentice]

I'm planning on using Google Forms, but haven't investigated its use that thoroughly yet. I'm still, therefore, working on the assumption it will do what I need or rather what it claims it does.

 

I'd hoped to allow the recipient to answer on line so that the survey could be 'paused' if necessary and completed over a period of time. Unfortunately that facility is only applicable to Google account holders.

 

That's the problem with just about everything now, I tend to have to spend as much time working out to use the computer as actually doing the task. My Mrs is okay on Excel but to ensure compatibility I'm working in Google Sheets. I spent several hours manually inputting almost four hundred entries alphabetically before discovering that I could have copied/pasted and sorted in half an hour.

[Gary Prentice]

The introduction letter, in a PDF, will be mailed out this weekend. If everyone who responded to [email protected] could forward it on, to the neighbouring boroughs, that would be great.

 

Have a good weekend everyone!

[Kveldssanger]

Look forward to it.

[Gary Prentice]

Here's the introductory letter and there's a short article in August's ARB magazine.

Introduction Letter.pdf