Any time you get responses like this in your OTHER category, you had better ask yourself some serious neighborhood blogger questions. Like, why was I born?
o You make it sound like a large house is the uber evolution of a CH resident. That’s bullshit. In a condo. It’s my THIRD home purchase, and I don’t ever intend to live in low-density, environment-killing single-family homes. This question sucks.
o Nice apartment, west of Broadway, liquid enough to buy a home in cash but think it’s a poor investment given research and economic projections.
o what is it with you and east of 15th?
o east of 15th, far from “quiet” and nothing to do with my home purchasing desires
o I don’t understand the question
Here’s the thing about Question 5 in CHS Census 2009 — well, wait. Before I start defending myself and the question, let’s look at the results:
So, um, the most common response category was 2.0 — Nicer apartment between Broadway and 15th. Mildly interesting I guess. But was it worth this kind of criticism?
Those questions sucked by anon
… the “residential trajectory” question is total BS. You make it sound like a large house is the uber evolution of a CH resident. That’s bullshit. I’m in a condo. It’s my third home purchase, and I don’t ever intend to live in low-density, environment-killing single-family homes. The way that question is written, you make it sound like the only reason anybody would ever want to live in a condo is because they can’t afford to live in a single family home east of 15th. This sort of bias pisses me off and undermines the validity of any survey that attempts to be census-like.
Worth it? I’m a stubborn bastard. As much as the purpose of the census — and this site — is to learn about Capitol Hill and the people that live here, it is also about doing that study in interesting and new ways. I was dedicated to finding a few places to more tightly integrate the survey into the fabric of the site. So question #5 was born as a connective thread to a post that had run on CHS and left me wondering what would happen if we dug further into the topic. Here’s the original article — Phases of Capitol Hill Residency (CHR).
So, my excuse is the experience I am trying to build on CHS — everything is connected. You can take your assumptions about my values and beliefs and file them away. Have your say about the importance of density or sustainability or unicorns. But keep your mind open to the possiblity that there is more to every situation. Focus on what you want to say, not tearing things apart. I know that at the heart of the matter, some of you wanted this survey to be more and question 5 (and a few others) limited its success. There can be more surveys in the future.
You can check out the complete CHS Census 2009 review here and a write-up on the directional question set here.
And here I thought you were trying to steal a demographic snapshot for potential advertisers, shame on me…
I don’t really need to do that. The Internet magick makes such efforts unnecessary: http://www.quantcast.com/capitolhillseattle.com
As the author of the original “Phases of Capitol Hill Residency (CHR)” post, I find it delightfully ironic that I spend the majority of my other-world, non-CHS day critiquing survey data — specifically, do questions measure what we intend for them to measure? And in light of that, I am going to second J’s argument above. No, the question obviously did not capture the actual housing trajectory of CHS readers. That wasn’t the intention and wouldn’t be that hard to do. But I do think it measured what J intended for it to measure. Maybe part of that was being in on a little CHS joke, but that’s a big reason that a lot of us (I assume) enjoy this site. For example, we must be *this close* to I-5 Shores being officially adopted by the city, no?
I also find census measurements (and jokes at their expense) totally amusing. Thanks J and Final!
I guess it is like three questions rolled up together and it is hard to answer for most people since all three parts don’t line up. What if I live in a condo west of Broadway that is my second home purchase, which do I pick?
The original post worked because it was your trajectory, but that doesn’t mean it will apply to everyone.
I have to agree with freckle. As a sociology/trends buff, you have to be willing to take criticism on the formulation of questions objectively. Granted, there really isn’t a reason to become irate at the nature of a census question, but if you don’t want your results skewed, even for the question you yourself are asking, you can’t put so many variables into one choice. So I guess you just have to ask yourself if you actually want to know something from the census you take, or if you just want to make an inside joke with people, which is also legitimate, but might be annoying to people who take the census and don’t want to be wasting their time because they think you are actually interested in gathering some kind of data.
I think a lot of this complaining and criticism is unnecessary (for several reasons but most especially) when you consider that there was an Other field on the question. This gave anyone a free form option for sharing their housing “status.”
I selected the other choice and wrote in my housing situation. And it didn’t upset me in the least that I didn’t fit into one of the set categories (I was also familiar w/the originating post on the subject). I know J isn’t technically a sociologist (although he seems like many of us to enjoy observing and discussing human interaction and behavior) and I know that his questions were intended for some fact-finding combined with fun – kinda like CHS itself.