| Sunday walk at the University of the Philippines |
| How do you feel about local government? Ano ang pakiramdam mo sa lokal na pamahalaan? |
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| The project results are suggestive that the feelings towards local government are not positive, especially among women. These findings enhance the understanding of public feelings towards local government; provide a glimpse at what is going on at an emotional level with people at this time in Filipino history. |
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| Laura Hann |
| 9/12/2010 |
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Table of Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
1.1 Objectives and scope of the project
1.2 Project design
1.3 Methodological considerations
1.3.1 Access
1.3.2 Methods
1.3.3 Ethical considerations
1.4 My approach
2. Survey Results
3. Survey Analysis
4. Questions raised
5. Conclusions
6. Appendix
6.1 Survey as given to respondent
6.2 Surveys collected by week
6.3 Surveys collected by gender
6.4 Face positive, neutral and negative division
6.5 Original survey responses
Preface
The aim of this report is to enhance understanding of the emotions associated with local government in a nation working towards a complete and successful decentralization. The key to this objective is that it is intended to enhance understanding, not provided a comprehensive picture. The population being analyzed is limited to one location in one country. This was completed by surveying people walking at the University of the Philippines on two consecutive Sunday afternoons.
This report is the outcome of a learning portfolio as part of the National College of Public Administration and Governance mastorial program. The project was the initial idea of Laura Hann under the instruction of Simeon Agustin Ilago through a course on introduction to local government and regional administration.
This report barely begins to fill the gap in emotional analysis of government in middle income nations working on decentralization. Greater study can be done in this field in the Philippines as well as China, Indonesia and others.
This paper looks at the research process followed by the results and then analysis. Please feel free to read in the order that is most relevant to your interest, I do hope that you become engaged and read the report in its entirety.
Finally I would like to thank all of the people who took time out of there Sunday walk to answer my survey, without them this would not have been possible. I would like to give special acknowledgment to the one gentleman who was honest enough to let me know that he had filled out a survey the week before when I approached him during the second phase of surveying.
1. Introduction
1.1 Objective and Scope
The overall objective of this project was to gauge the emotions of active individuals in the Quezon City region in regards to local government. Due to the consistent development and changes in decentralization and local government keeping an accurate gauge on peoples emotions is difficult. This project is designed to act as a window into a specific time and place, to help build understanding or greater trends over time.
The selection of survey location was guided by the accessibility to a concentrated large number of people who had a high probability of feeling confidant in their English skills. The confidence in English excluded several potential respondents and could have been reduced if I as the surveyor had elicited a native speaker to accompany me during the survey time. The two survey collections were at approximately the same time and location with one week time lapse, with the objective to gain a relatively high understanding of the population walking at UP on a given Sunday evening.
1.2 Project Design
The project was designed and carried out by the author of this report, Laura Hann, working as a mastorial student under the teaching of Simeon A Ilago at the National College of Public Administration and Governance part of the University of the Philippines at Diliman.
The project ran the entirety of the fall semester, June 21 2010 till October 18 2010, with the actual survey collection occurring on Sunday September 5 2010 and Sunday September 12 2010. Both survey collections occurred between 5pm and 630pm, with respondent selection based on requesting response from every person, not wearing headphones or on a cell phone, who walked past the surveyor. This selection continued till the number of responses, 21 the first week and 19 the second, were collected.
A total of 14 people were approached who selected not to participate. Some of the 14 gave reasons including currently working for the government, the topic matter being too personal, difficulty in vision, and embarrassment.
1.3 Methodological considerations
1.3.1 Access
I had two primary considerations when it came to accessing people. The first was language. As a non Tagalog speaker it was necessary to find a group of people who were comfortable interacting in English. The location selection of UP as a survey location proved to be compatible with the language needs. I made two alterations to the original survey design in order to minimized language barriers. First I had the question written in English on the first line and Tagalog on the second line. Second I eliminated all feeling words under the faces, giving all respondents a language free emotion selection. I believe that at least 3 and potentially 7 of the non responses were based on a lack of comfort with English.
Second, I wondered if my gender and ethnicity would impact my ability to collect information. After the two collection times I would suggest that these factors did impact my collection. I believe that people were more interested and willing to fill out my survey because I am a Caucasian woman. My ethnicity caused greater interest in my actions and my gender allowed me to be seen as less threatening than perhaps a man would have been seen.
1.3.2 Methods
The overall design and structure of this project was based on survey response. The survey was designed to be completed by one person in a limited time capacity. Due to these considerations no preliminary studies or focus groups were conducted.
I wondered if Filipino culture was accustomed to using faces to describe emotions. This proved to be a non issue; respondents appeared comfortable and familiar with the face selection to represent emotion. Several commented on the difficulty of choosing, none however commented on the difficulty of using a face to express their emotions.
1.3.3 Ethical Considerations
Anonymity was built into the survey. No respondent was asked to identify any characteristics about themselves. As the surveyor, I marked the gender of the respondent after they made their face selection. Only one gentleman refused to participate due to the sensitive nature of the question. A greater level of confidentiality could have been included by providing the respondent with a way to return the survey unseen by the surveyor. Due to the location consideration however I felt the logistics of this added layer of confidentiality was not practical. The majority of the surveys were circled by the surveyor, this was due to the fact that the respondents did not want to use the writing utensil since they were mid exercise and sweaty. The physical completion of the survey by the survey furthers the anonymity of the respondent since virtually no method exists to trace the survey back to the respondent. The surveys were cataloged by gender and collection date with no regards to the order completed, as a final measure of anonymity.
1.4 My Approach
The majority of research being done into local government is technically based. While this is relevant and insightful, this project was aimed to be less technical, as demonstrated in the selection of feeling faces as the mode of data gathering. The best policies and analysis can be completed with the most comprehensive understandings. This project serves to act as an alternative view to understanding local government research, increasing comprehension.
The objective to be less technical had two underlying components. First, the sample size for this project was 40. 21 collected the first week and 19 the second. The number of feeling faces presented to the respondent was 70, creating the possibility for each respondent to make a unique selection. This was done intentionally, in order to gauge how diverse the populations feeling face identification was. The second was the open ended nature of the question. The wording of “How do you feel about local government?” was designed to be individually interpreted by the respondent. This put me as the surveyor in a position where my neutrality and non bias was questioned. Several respondents sought clarification on what local government, if I sought their overall feelings or their feeling today and other such questions. In an effort to allow as much interpretation as possible, I responded to these questions by restating the question being asked or by saying “whatever you want”.
2. Survey Results
Over the course of two weeks in September 2010, two groups of respondents were selected and asked to answer one question; “How do you feel about local government?” A total of 40 questionnaires were collected. 52% of the surveys were collected during week one of the project, while 48% were collected during week two (please see Appendix 6.2). Of the 40 respondents 52% were male and 48% were female (please see Appendix 6.3). Each respondent was presented with a feeling face sheet containing 70 faces and requested to select the face that most accurately represented how they felt (please see Appendix 6.1). The 70 faces were divided into three categories for analysis; positive, neutral and negative. The face chart presented contained a negative tendency with 41% of the faces being categorized as negative, 36% as neutral and 23% as positive.
This negative tendency potentially skewed the results towards the negative from respondents who made random selections.
Based on the 40 responses, a clear overall feeling of negativity towards local government emerged. 45% of respondents selected negative feeling faces, 28% neutral and 27% positive.
Women had a strong negative feeling towards local government. 61% of women respondents selected negative feeling faces, 22% neutral and 17% positive.
Men had a generally even distribution of feelings with a slight positive trend. 36% of male respondents selected positive feeling faces, 32% neutral, and 32% negative.
After these results, I wondered if the week time lapse caused any changes in respondents feelings. I found that during week one people had a 15% greater feeling of negativity than during week two, suggesting that outside events significantly impact feelings.
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Given the number of feeling faces was larger than the number of respondents there was a .57 probability that each respondent would select a different face. Two faces received three votes each. These two “most popular” faces were:
Six faces received two votes. These faces were:
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These eight commonly selected faces had 25% positive selection 25% neutral and 50% negative.
3. Survey analysis
Women walking around the UP campus on Sunday evenings have primarily negative feelings towards local government. Men walking around the UP campus on Sunday evenings have equally negative as positive feelings towards local government. Overall , 23% men and women walking around the UP campus on Sunday evenings have positive feelings towards local government, the remainder having neutral or negative feelings. The majority UP campus walkers have polar feelings, 72% of respondents had positive or negative feelings about local government.
4. Questions Raised
This feeling gauge raised several areas that could be further explored. The 20% change in feelings from one week to the next raises the question of what outside factors created this shift, or what do UP walkers pay attention to and care about? If this feeling gauge was applied to a community outside of UP would similar feelings be found, or is this analysis reflecting a small sub sector of Philippines? With a lack of positive feelings what can and should local governments do to shift these feelings?
5. Conclusion
In order for this survey to be more accurate and applicable, I would select a feeling face chart that was equally distributed between positive, neutral and negative. However given the limitations and limited scope of this project the results are suggestive that the feelings towards local government are not positive, especially among women. The questions that arise from this provide avenues for further investigation. These findings and questions enhance the understanding of public feelings towards local government. These findings provide a glimpse at what is going on in an emotional level with people at this time in Filipino history.
Appendix 6.1 (please see following page)
Appendix 6.5
Supplemental Binder
Appendix 6.2
Surveys collected by week
Appendix 6.3
Surveys collected by gender
Appendix 6.4
Please see the following page
Appendix 6.5
Please refer to supplemental binder
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