Team:BJ101ID/Questionnaire survey.html
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Our questionnaire consisted of 17 multiple choice questions. We divided our questionnaire to three sections. The first section is about the sample’s personal information, including 3 questions. These information were intended to help us analyze our results. For all questions in this section, there was one choice that is “confidential.” Through this method, we hope to protect the privacies of our samples as much as possible. The second section is about recycled paper, including 10 questions. The third section is about synthetic biology, including 4 questions. We made clear of our purpose at the start of the questionnaire in the picture following:
Section 1:
Question 1:
This question explored the gender of research sample. We wanted to understand which gender of population is more interested in our field of research and is willing to complete this questionnaire. We suspected a higher percentage of the sample to be women because previous research done by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) revealed that women are more likely to pay attention and take part in environmental actions. We believe that our data supported this point as it is shown that men only consisted 41% of total gender reveled population. This piece of evidence may suggest that our later questions that has is related to environmental problems will be reflected in a more positive way. Meaning that our data in terms of gender will be slightly different from the average population.
Question 2:
This question focused on the age group of research. Our sample were under the age of 60 for 99% of sample. In the 60-year-old range, there were two extremes of below 18 and above 60. The age group below 18 could be explained by friends and classmates of us. This group of people will be exposed to the future advances of technology and are more related to the recycled paper. The age group over 60 had a high percentage could e explained by the fact that they simply have more free time to do such questionnaires. The middle age group’s low participate rate could be explained for that they have to spend more time on their work and field of study and often spend less time doing questionnaires.
Question 3:
The last question was designated to see the sample’s level of education. This was an extension from the previous section. We see a small different between the number of samples’ education level to high school and below and age of below 18. The other portion of education level were are graduated or master’s degree and higher. This means that our samples were all highly educated. We suspect this to be that the more educated population are going to understand our questionnaire in a more comprehensive way. At the same time, most of the people we know are educated like us. Here, we are not stressing that the less educated population do not care about environmental issues, they have their own ways of saving the world, but they do not have the ability to understand many things we are trying to do; Therefore, we have later developed an education section for our human practice to teach others about our project.
Section 3:
Question 14:
This question began our search for the level of understanding about synthetic biology. The result showed a majority (more than 80%) of the sample having limited understanding to this subject. This result is reasonable since that for someone that doesn’t major in biology, chemistry or related subjects, their understanding of synthetic biology will only be at high school level (understanding basic mechanisms). However, I do believe that there are defects of our phrasing of the question, as that we did not explain what the boundaries for “decent understanding” is and “limited understanding” is. But our results still reflects that there is a need for a bigger population to understand synthetic biology.
Question 15:
This was an exception of a multi-answer question where the samples were to pick how they came to know synthetic biology. We believe that this question will help us gain knowledge of how we could educate others. As expected, about 50% of the samples stated that they had learned some synthetic biology through the internet. The subject we are asking is relatively unconventional that had only emerged in recent years to the public view especially in China. Internet being also a new trend since the 21st century, helped people today to learn things at expeditious speed. Our data also showed a high percentage choosing school education and nonprofit advertisements. This revealed that society are becoming more and more aware of this field of study.
Question 16:
This question seeks to understand how willing people are to participate in activity of synthetic biology. 70% of the samples were willing to participate. We found this number higher than expected since that not everyone is interested in synthetic biology and that they also have their own business to do. But we were also happy to see that many have this enthusiasm towards this subject.
Question 17:
This last question touched on the things that would attract one to such activity mentioned in the previous question. It was meant to help us better organize our activities. We found that majority of the people wanted to learn the applications, possible future and experiment theories of synthetic biology while not many wanted to learn about related subject’s history. This fits well with our project as that we are doing something new that could help the society. However, both question 16 and 17’s result could be influenced if our sample’s age group or education level was different. But overall, we see a general support to what we are doing.