The plan for this week would be to sit at a bench near a four way stop and simply count the number of cars and bikes that pass. I will most likely have some separate columns for violations and a column for no violations. I plan on writing abbreviation such as BMC or RWB for "blue car driven by a man" or "red bike ridden by a woman." The problems I anticipate are the cold weather and the fact that I have no control over how many vehicles will appear at the four way stop at a time. This could lead to a smaller amount of data than I would like.
1) What type of group of people are you planning to study?
People driving vehicles at a four way stop.
2) What do you want to or expect to learn from these people?
If there is a correlation between colors of vehicles/types of vehicles/gender of drivers and traffic violations or aggression (such as honking the horn unnecessarily.
3) How you are going to study them two hours per week?
Sit at a four way intersection and make note of what happens
4) What quantitative data would you record?
Number and type/color of vehicles that do not obey traffic laws at a four way stop
5) What qualitative data would you record?
Whether pedestrians are courteous and yield the rite of way to drivers. How aggressive drivers of different vehicle types appear to be while driving. How many drivers are on the phone.
6) How are you planning to interact with the people you are observing?
I could attempt to cross the street and yield the rite of way to a vehicle and see if they make some gesture of gratitude or simply ignore me.
I think this would be fun to do. You (we) could also see whether people slow down at a stop sign without actually fully stopping and whether certain people will try to force their way through the intersection after stopping, even if someone else stopped at the intersection before them.
ReplyDeleteHere's my Ethnography proposal if you wanna check it out: http://jimmymho.blogspot.com/2011/02/tentative-ethnography-proposal.html