YETI participant feedback

[Hari Sridhar]

Hi,

Please click on the link below and complete the survey form. While
doing this, make a note of any questions which you think require
rewording or if new questions are required and write back to me latest
by Monday.
http://www.kwiksurveys.com/online-survey.php?surveyID=HIKEGH_fa5193ed

This survey was put together by Robin, Narayan, Anand, Subhankar and me.

Hari

--
Hari Sridhar
Ph.D student
Centre for Ecological Sciences
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore - 560012
Karnataka, India
http://ces.iisc.ernet.in

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[M O Anand]

Hi Hari. Here are a few additional comments:

1. To avoid confusion, make all questions cumpolsary and include the not applicable/do not wish to answer option.
2. Queston 3: Change 'YETI last year' to 'YETI 2010'
3. To question 6 and similar ones, give a third option like 'Did not present'.
4. Question 7: add another option 'Other (please specify)
5. I find question 20 a bit vague. Perhaps you also want to find out about multimedia.
6. Q 27: Include did not eat option

Anand

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Research Scholar

National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore
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AND
Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore
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[Robin Vijayan]

Looks good, only thing is too many questions. So, I suggest:

Remove 34
24. Add choice: Same registration, same food

Can you convert 8-12 to a table (the other tables are nice) 8-12 can be time, quality, number as questions for posters, orals and different options of choice. Then you can delete 16,

Can you add 18,19, 21 to Q20? Will make it concise Quest for organization quality.

22-26 is too many questions on travel. can we reduce somehow? Dont have any suggestions. Merge 23,24?

For 28, do you want to try a continous variable? :) like "I prefer between xx and xx and have boxes for them to fill the numbers? Lets see if they say zero or what max. We can then do nice stats :))

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National Institute of Advanced Studies
Indian Institute of Science campus, Bangalore 560012, India

National Centre for Biological Sciences
GKVK Campus, Bangalore 560065, India

Narendra Babu Research Fund
www.nberig.org

[Jahnavi Joshi]

Hi Hari,

few suggestions / thoughts:

1. agree with anand that we should make all questions compulsory. for
example we 7 why is it optional?

2. Q3. last year? 2009 right?

3. agree with Robin it's too lengthy, in my opinion we should delete
Q22 to 26 why are we asking them? we didn't provide accommodation
neither gave travel grants. we should ask questions which were
relevant to this event.

4.again no need to ask Q29

5. question 31 to 35 did not really understand the logic why are we
asking these questions

Jahnavi

--
Jahnavi Joshi
PhD student,
Centre for Ecological Sciences,
Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore.

[Hari Sridhar]

In response to Robin, Anand and Jahnavi's comments so far:

Will try and make all questions compulsory..just that people might find it
easier to just skip a question rather than click on "Not applicable" many
times.

Will try and combine questions wherever possible but difficult for most.

We are asking people about travel and accommodation to get an idea for
next year. Should we think of providing travel support or help with
accommodation arrangements.

About questions 29 and 31-35 - these are things that Narayan, Robin and
Subhankar want to find out to help them with next year's organisation.

Hari

[Madhura Niphadkar]

Hi Hari,
Agree with most suggestions so far. Also, did you mean YETI 2009 by last year, since you have mentioned YETI 2010 in the next question? Did you mean to see how many repeat attendees found YETI 2010 an improvement over YETI 2009? Not sure if that is relevant here.

It does seem a bit too long. Maybe you could make tables like combine qs 8 and 10 and 9, 11 and 12 if possible.

Havent included anything about Graffiti wall and map, and maybe how they could be made more interactive, or inclusive in the overall programme - such as discuss/mention one or two of the interesting Graffiti questions throughout the day in announcements, so that it can become interesting and more people participate. Or............ maybe should not include in survey, it will become longer !!! :-)

Look forward to the general feedback,
Madhura

[Hari Sridhar]

Hi,

Yes i did mean YETI 2009; to get an idea of how many people were
'recaptured'.

If you have specific questions about the graffiti wall or map please tell
and i'll add.

The survey does seem long, but doesn't take very long to do does it?

Hari

[Madhura Niphadkar]

No, doesnt seem to take too long to do. I did it all in about 8-9 minutes (didnt submit though!!). Maybe Amit has more thoughts about Graffiti wall questions.

I dont think I would want to include questions on the map just yet.....maybe something to the tune of whether they thought it was indicative of the geographic gaps in current ecology research in India...... but it may not be relevant to the organizational approach that this survey has, and not a conceptual one.

Madhura

[Raman Kumar]

It took me about 4 mins to answer the questionnaire. Of course, it may take longer if people fill in comments.
Wondering if in Q 29, there could be another option:
"Same registration charges (towards partial funding of travel to non-earning participants without aid), purchased food"

Raman

[Raman Kumar]

Could also include feedback on the Research Ethics talk by Nanjundiah

[amit kurien]

hi,

Q 15 & 16 - can more than one option be checked, and can they be ranked? Might make sense during analysis.

Q 34. I feel it might be better if organisers decide the answer to the question.

Graffiti board - We could have a comment box, for them to write whether they found anything specifically useful (suggested books by faculty, any idea, etc.) about the 'Speak Up, Be Heard' board. More importantly it might be worthwhile to suggest means of improving. I somehow feel there is no one metric to figure out it usefulness.

Amit

[dipani sutaria]

1. can we make all questions compulsory..
2. in 29 the options already creating an impression about cheap and
expensive and thus is already projecting the answer in the
participants mind.. just write simply:
- registration charge such that it covers food
- registration charge with additional option of food
- only registration (grazing from near bye stalls if available around IIT)

:) enjoy the sunday peoples,
dipani

--

dipani nitin sutaria, Ph.D.

senior research fellow
foundation for ecological research, advocacy & learning
'shefali' - No 27, 2nd Cross, appavou Nagar
vazhakulam, pondicherry- 605 013
india
phone: 91 (413) 2671566 & 67

adjunct research fellow
school of earth and environmental sciences
james cook university
townsville, queensland 4811
australia

[Hari Sridhar]

Hi,

But shouldnt we ask participants whether they would like the organizers
to organize the cheapest meal possible or would they rather pay more
for special dinners?

Hari

[Robin Vijayan]

I think it gets too complicated. Cant we base that on our feedback from other quests? like on food?

[Robin Vijayan]

also.. the 'cheapest possible' and 'special dinner' is prone to further interpretation. I think this is best left out.

On Oct 10, 2010, at 10:37 PM, Hari Sridhar wrote:

[Hari Sridhar]

What kind of interpretation? I think we should ask them how much they want
to spend on food.

[Robin Vijayan]

:) This is something Rana was telling me about. One could always think that the cheapest possible is kanji (gruel?) and pickle in the south. I guess we could ask them how much money they want to spend. But am not sure how far we will go with that.

[Hari Sridhar]

Well atleast by asking them, we could decide up to how much higher than
that we could go. For e.g., if the average of what people want is Rs. 10
per meal (roughly what a plate of kanji and pickle would cost?), we might
not go that low (?), but at least we will know not to go much higher than
that either? What do the others think? Please take a look at the survey
and get back with comments latest by today. We'll try and send this off
tomorrow. Thanks.

[Robin Vijayan]

Hey Hari,

Really, this is going no where.
What if more people say Rs10 per meal?? ..or if they say Rs300 per meal. Are we then going to do that?

I suggest we leave it at Dipani's wording.

>>>>>> - registration charge such that it covers food
>>>>>> - registration charge with additional option of food

>>>>>> - only registration (grazing from Canteens in IIT..since no eateries near by)

R

[Subhankar Chakraborty]

Hi,

I think the Q. No. 29 is framed in such a way that it will make the participants to choose one particular option. Besides this, whether the meal can be provided by Rs.10 or Rs.50 would mostly depend on the local condition. I think the option that Dipani suggested makes more sense and would request Q.N. 29 to rephrase like:

How do you think about the registration charge?
1. Registration charge such that it covers food
2. Registration charge with additional option of food
3. Only registration

As Robin made the point earlier, in some places there might be problem of finding food by the participants themselves (if the number is as high as 400).

Regards,

Subho.

--
_______________________________________________________________________
Subhankar Chakraborty

PhD Student

National Institute of Advanced Studies

Indian Institute of Science Campus
Bangalore- 560 012, India

Laboratory 3

National Centre for Biological Sciences

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
GKVK Campus, Bellary Road
Bangalore 560 065, India

Tel : +91-9449045096 (Mobile)

[Hari Sridhar]

My problem is with option 1 in your suggested choices. What does "covers
food" mean? This year we made the decision on behalf of everyone that they
would like a special, banquet-like dinner but maybe they would be happier
to spend less and make do with not-so-special dinners. When we are making
all other decisions based on what the participants say, why aren't we
doing the same in this case? Of course we might not be able to provide
meals at rates as low (or as high) as they ask for but at least we will
get a rough idea.

[Jayabharathy R]

If I didn't miss it, there was no question on the Documentary screening
and the Popular talk. I know the point of popular talk is that many people
would like it, but it would be nice to get some feedback there too. I
personally liked both and mentioned it in Q16. May be you can include
these in the question: Which part of the organised programme did you like
the most? May be people can rank them in the extra space provided if they
want to.

Thanks,

jayabharathy

begin_of_the_skype_highlighting��������������91 (413)
2671566������end_of_the_skype_highlighting & 67

[dipani sutaria]

Hari,

It is a well-researched and sophisticated social science technique -
the art of asking questions without influencing the answers.

With all due respect for everyone I have met in the past ten days, I
would think that people who attend conferences would know that
registration will be higher if all meals are included-it is common
sense. By including the words 'higher' or 'lower' - 'cheaper or
expensive' the options sound manipulative. The costs are not chosen by
the participants. The costs are decided by the organizing committee,
and as we all know it has been a battle. But as KS said, the battles
created the perfect result with YETI 2010.

Moreover, there is an option that breaks up the meal costs and allows
individuals to chose which meal they would like to pay for and which
not.

Hope this clarifies things.
Dipani

--

vazhakulam, pondicherry- 605 013 - india

phone: 91 (413) 2671566 & 67

adjunct research fellow
school of earth and environmental sciences
james cook university

queensland 4811 - australia

[Robin Vijayan]

Was talking to TRSR. He was saying that we should be wary of over dependance on feedback for costs. This is because we are not sampling people who have found the costs to be prohibitively high.

Why dont we let the Guwahati folks decide what they want to know... it is also time for us to rest our battles :)
R

[Hari Sridhar]

No it does not clarify things:)

I fully agree that the way questions are asked should not influence the
answers. So maybe someone could suggest a better way of asking
participants whether they want not-so-fancy food at lower costs or
fancy-food at higher costs?

Of course it is obvious that registration costs will be higher if it
includes food costs; the question is by how much.

Why cant the costs be chosen by participants? They are paying after all!

Hari

[dipani sutaria]

- I agree that Guwahati can decide about this
- We should rest our battles
- There is an option that shows what registration with and without
food and how much each meal costs.

Signing out. Goodbye
dipani

[Hari Sridhar]

Agreed. We'll modify it to what Dipani suggested. I'm sure that if the
Guwahati people think that it is important to involve the participants in
this decision, they will figure out a way later:)