Week 1: Beginning My Survey

Hi, everyone! Welcome to my Week 1 blog post! This week I did two things: created my survey and researched how to administer my survey.

Creation of my survey:

My survey has 4 parts to it: a section with initial information, a section with questions about tobacco product usage, a section asking about indicators of depression and anxiety, and a section regarding the respondent’s beliefs about tobacco product usage.

In the initial information section, I am asking whether the respondent is an Alameda County resident, what their age is, and whether they have ever used tobacco products. In my survey, I am listing tobacco products as being cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco, smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes/vapes, cigars (premium cigars, little filtered cigars, and cigarillos), hookahs, pipe tobacco, nicotine gels, and dissolvables. All these products are defined as tobacco products according to the CDC. If the respondent reports using tobacco products, they will be asked about their tobacco product usage; if not, they will move on to the section asking about beliefs about tobacco product usage.

In the section regarding tobacco product usage, I am trying to get more information about the respondent’s habits. I ask which tobacco products the respondent uses, how frequently they use them, whether tobacco product usage has a positive impact on their life, whether they wish to quit/reduce, and whether a doctor has recommended they quit/reduce. While designing this part of the survey, I looked at many past surveys to determine how they had asked questions and I found that for different tobacco products, different questions are asked to determine frequency. However, to keep my survey simple for the respondent, I am asking for the frequency of usage of any tobacco product. Once the respondent has completed this section, they move on to the section with questions about depression and anxiety.

The section about depression and anxiety asks questions that can indicate symptoms of the mental disorders. I have certain questions that I will be asking adults above the age of 17 and another set of questions that I will be asking children 17 and under. In order to design this part of the survey I used a book Ms. Nagpal loaned me, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) by the American Psychiatric Association. I spent time reading about different depressive and anxiety disorders and understanding their symptoms. I also learnt that there are other factors that can cause respondents to report similar symptoms. However, since I cannot access a respondent’s full medical history, I will have to accept that there are limitations to the information I can obtain through my survey. Additionally, the book linked me to a website that showed me a cross-cutting symptom measure for adults and children. This questionnaire can determine symptoms of many mental disorders, and I used the questions from it in my survey. After answering this section, the respondent will move on to the final section.

The final section is dedicated to determining what people believe the impacts of tobacco product usage are. I will ask the respondents to select whether they believe tobacco product usage worsens or helps with stress, anxiety, and depression.

Administering my survey:

Because I will be doing my survey online and in person, I spent time researching how I should administer my surveys. I created an online survey that I will be sending out soon. I also looked at many articles explaining how I should approach people and explain my survey. I researched different ways to do an in-person survey, such as using paper, using a device, or asking the respondents the questions myself. I hope to gather a wide range of respondents, so I plan to get respondents from many places, such as high schools, senior centers, libraries, and stores. Soon, I will start reaching out to people to ask them if I may administer my survey.

I’m happy with all the work that’s been done this week, and I loved learning more through my research. I am slightly nervous about getting responses from my survey, but I am determined to get a good sample size. Hopefully next week is just as exciting and I can’t wait to learn more!

Thanks for reading and hope to see you again!