planning officers
It was during the discussion following the presentation at that meeting of the UK Healthy Cities Network one of the Healthy City coordinators suggested that it would be interesting to see the results if all the Healthy City coordinators were given the
opportunity to respond to the questions.
This suggestion was given further thought and consideration, and it was decided that it was an idea worth following up. However, being conscious of the time it would take to arrange and undertake a further eleven interviews and also the time to then transcribe the interviews it was decided that the use of an online web based questionnaire would be a more appropriate method to gather the responses. It is worth noting here that
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questionnaires are often referred to as surveys and for the purpose of this research they are considered to be the same and the terms are used interchangeably.
According to Mason and Dale (Mason and Dale, 2011:7) ‘...surveys can build pictures of ...by establishing links and connections...’ and it is in this spirit the survey method was considered to be an appropriate method to gather this information.
As Bristol Online Surveys had been used by the researcher previously it was
established that UCLan had an account and arranged for access to that account. Once this had been done the questionnaire was developed from the interview templates and sent to the Healthy City co-ordinators who had not been included in the initial telephone interviews.
It became evident when analysing the telephone interview responses that development planning officers had not been included in the interview process. This was an oversight as it had been expected that the Healthy City co-ordinators following the initial email enquiry to nominate appropriate development planning officers to take part in the telephone interviews had nominated appropriate officers. It was only during the collation of the responses that their omission became obvious.
In order to redress this oversight and as access to a Bristol Online Survey account had already been secured it was decided that the questions could easily be adapted into a web based questionnaire as they had been for the Healthy City co-ordinators questions and emailed to the planning departments of the WHO designated Healthy Cities in the UK.
Both the online surveys questions were reviewed by the supervisory team to ensure accuracy but it was decided that it wasn’t necessary to pilot the questionnaires as they had already been piloted prior to the telephone interviews taking place.
Each survey was given its own unique name and web address. The survey sent to the local authority planning departments was called Health and Planning and the web address was http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/uclan/healthandplanning. The survey sent to the Healthy City coordinators was called Healthy Cities and the web address was http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/uclan/healthycities.
Both the surveys were launched on 3 February 2011 with an initial closing date of 3 March 2011. The websites of the LAs were checked and although unable to locate personal email addresses for the planning officers, generic email addresses for the planning departments were available. An email with the link to the survey website was sent to these generic email addresses with a request to forward the email to all the appropriate planning officers.
The closing dates of both web surveys were extended to 17 March 2011. This was because of the initial disappointing poor response rate. Further emails were sent to draw attention to the amended survey closing date in an attempt to garner more responses. Table 3.8 shows the schedule for the launch of both surveys and also the date reminders were sent. The launch and all the reminders were sent by email. The dates are the same for the launch and reminders sent to the Healthy City coordinators.
Local Authority Survey sent Reminder 1 Reminder 2
Swansea 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11
Manchester 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11
Preston 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11
Carlisle 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11
Glasgow 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11
Brighton and Hove 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11
Cardiff 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11 Derry/Londonderry 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11 Newcastle Upon Tyne 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11 Belfast 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11 Stoke on Trent 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11 Liverpool 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11 Sheffield 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11 Sunderland 3/2/11 4/3/11 14/3/11
Table 3.8: Timetable for the launch of the online surveys
The following table, Table 3.9, shows the distribution of the responses to each survey in relation to the date of the survey launches and the dates of the reminders.
3/2/11 to 3/3/11 4/3/11 to 13/3/11 14/3/11 to 17/3/11 Total Health and 6 8 5 19
62 Planning Survey Healthy Cities Survey 3 1 1 5
Table 3.9: Details of survey responses in relation to launch and reminder dates
As is evident above, the surveys had a limited response. This was not unexpected for the Healthy Cities survey as there are a limited number of designated Healthy Cities in the UK. However, the poor response rate to the Health and Planning survey was unexpected as the initial goal was for 70 responses.
3.5.1 Choosing the data collection method
There are a number of data collection methods synonymous with questionnaires, notably mail and online methods. The mail method purely entails producing the
questionnaires then posting them out, remembering to include a reply paid envelope for the response. The online method requires the use of a host website, such as Bristol Online Surveys or Survey Monkey, which is used to build the questionnaire, often using templates available on the website, the link to the questionnaire (also known as the URL - Uniform Resource Locator) is then emailed out to perspective respondents to access and complete online.
There are a number of advantages and disadvantages to both these methods and these are displayed in Table 3.10.
Advantages Disadvantages
Mail More control over who
receives the questionnaire;
Huge financial postage costs; Slow;
No record/proof of delivery; Relies on the respondent returning the completed questionnaire;
Very time-consuming to produce the questionnaire
Online Quick;
Limited costs;
Immediate access to the
Limited control over who respondent;
responses; Secure
Table 3.10: Advantages and disadvantages of mail and online questionnaires
It is clearly evident from the above table that the advantages of using an online web- based questionnaire far exceed those of using the more traditional mail method.
3.5.2 The online questionnaires
There are a number of websites available to host an online questionnaire e.g. Survey Monkey, Survey Toll and Bristol Online Surveys. Bristol Online Surveys (BOS) were selected to use as the host for the online questionnaires as the university already had an existing account, therefore authorisation to use the website and subsequent access were easily obtained. Also, the researcher had had experience of BOS as the method had been used in previous research which provided some experience of the
capabilities of the method.
3.5.3 Change method?
The use of an online questionnaire was the right choice to make. It allowed the questionnaire to be delivered electronically and therefore quickly to all the intended respondents. It also allowed the respondents to complete it and then not to have to bother about it again because once it had been completed they didn’t have to return the questionnaire through the post.
3.5.4 Choose different criteria?
The criteria chosen for the questionnaires are considered to be appropriate for this research. The questions chosen allowed the limited identification of the respondents to establish the geographical area and job title only of each respondent and then
continued on to ask questions pertinent and relevant to this research.
Possibly the only change I would make if I were to repeat the study would be to ask more questions. Although I have given little thought to what those questions would ask. Whilst I was developing the questionnaires I was conscious of the length of time that would be required for them to be completed as the majority of questions were open and required more than the selection of a yes or no answer. It was important that people
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were not deterred by this. This was particularly relevant as no reward was offered for participation.