Survey at the Health Fair

This health fair assessment survey is determining if people have access to healthcare and if they have encountered any problems or experienced any concerns with receiving healthcare. The researchers will interview participants about the locations they seek healthcare services, the types of services they are seeking and if they encounter any specific problems while seeking these services. The researchers hope to gain a better understanding of different healthcare resources and their availability. They want to know if people have trouble gaining these services and/or the reasons they may experience these issues so they can see if alternate services may be of benefit.

            Conducting an in-person interview can be tricky for some researchers because some participants can question the privacy of the interview when the interviewer is writing down their answers. As long as the interview is performed in a private area, there should be minimal ethical concerns. Some people may find this type of study to be uncomfortable because some of the topics of discussion may be private or controversial to speak about.

Survey Questions

            The questions seem to have specific responses but because there is a category called other to choose from, there could be some variations with the responses. Depending on the type of participants they are getting form this study, there could be some test-retest reliability. If the participants generally have the same education levels, socioeconomic statuses, and possibly similar zip codes, then the results may be similar if this study was conducted again.

            When it comes to face validity, the nature of the questions can cause the questions to be under-reported or downplayed. Since the research questions bring up controversial issues regarding discrimination, some people may choose not mention if they have experienced any type of discrimination. This can cause the questions to be lacking in face validity.

Administration of Questions

            The questionnaire should be administered either through an online questionnaire or pen and pencil. As mentioned before, due to the nature of the questions, some people may choose not to report the concerns or negative experiences they have had while seeking health services. This could be, in part, due to the uncomfortable nature of the questions or they may feel the interviewer will not understand. Some may even think the interviewer could judge to them if they knew they share something that is private to them so they would want their responses to be completely private, even from the interviewer.

Survey Strengths

            The survey gives the researcher an opportunity to fully assess the participants access to healthcare and if they experience any type of issues with receiving service or gaining access by allowing the participants to give another explanation. Most questionnaires give specific answer choices that you must fit your experience into but some people’s experiences could veer away from the answer choices.

            The questionnaire has a good overall appearance. The questions and answers are formatting in a clean manner which allows the interviewer to move easily through the questions. Also the questions are worded in a way that is easy for the interviewer to understand.

Survey Weakness

            The survey has both open ended and closed ended questions because it allows for the other explanation answer. This a weakness because the answers could vary from person to person thus causing the interviewers to see very mixed results.

Assets/Limitations

            The biggest asset of the survey is demographics category. The researchers made sure to set different categories that could affect their results. Age, education, socioeconomic status, race, marital status, employment status and zip code could all effect the results. I can imagine that a person who is single, unemployed, a minority, and living in a zip code that is a predominately low income area may not have adequate access to healthcare or may have negative experiences such as discrimination based on the ability to pay when seeking services.

            The biggest limitation, as mentioned before, is the type of survey being conducted. I believe by conducting an in-person interview, the researchers may not get the results they have hypothesized because people may be too uncomfortable to share their negative concerns or experiences. The interviewee may think that the interviewer does not identify with their experiences due to cultural barriers and may feel less eager to share their negative experiences.