Getting more respondents

I'm closing my research survey on 31 August which means there are less than 90 days to generate responses. However, I naturally want to get as many as possible and while my wildest-dream figure of 1000 is looking unattainable there is much more I can do to get people completing my questionnaire.

I have slightly over 250 valid responses to date, and I continue to advertise online which by itself will get me to about 350 if I'm lucky. I won't do anything else until after 13 June, my last exam, but they still gives me plenty of time to find people to survey.

What shall I do?

I still have quite a few leaflets - about 200 - to I'm going to find eight venues to leave some at. I've identified three strong contenders so far. I definitely don't want to go anywhere to overtly sex-oriented so will be avoiding gay-saunas and the like. I will go to a couple of sexual health services, but the rest will be social venues like bars.

Also, London Pride is coming up. A colleague of mine had the good idea of canvassing people at Pride, so I'll print off about 100 surveys and pre-paid envelopes and hand them out at the event, as well as some of the smaller leaflets I had printed for people who don't want to complete the survey there-and-then.

I can then get rid of the rest of the small leaflets by putting them through people's letter boxes or hading them out on Soho, or Vauxhall or a similar area.

With luck that will push me over the 500 responses mark, which I think will be quite respectable.

All of this restricts (off-line) responses to the London area by and large. I could go to a pride event outside London of course but that will depend on time and money being available to do it. I was a little worried that I wouldn't get too much of a representative sample of guys taking part; but doing an analysis of respondents' postcodes I think I've got a good coverage of the UK so far. Continuing with the online advertising will help keep that balance.

250

To date I've achieved 250 responses. Most of these have been through online advertising. I've had to restrict this due to cost; but fortunately I have recently been to Brighton and Pride is coming up which has given me/will give me an opportunity to be brave and hand out fliers and leaflets. I am still ambitious of getting 1000 responses, but my trajectory currently has me getting to about 500.

Two things my 250 respondents have surprised me with:

• their age
• their ethnicity

Advertising online has attracted rather younger people than I had anticipated. At one point more than 50% were under 25. Judicious tinkering has reduced this proportion to a third. However, it has skewed results in other ways. Education qualifications tend to be 'A' level or below (18 to 24 year olds are usually students) and life experiences - well, they haven't had them!

On the plus side one issue it has revealed is the need to tackle homophobic bullying in schools. It seems to eb a huge issue, with nor than 90% of respondents seeing tackling it as a priority. This compares with about two thirds supporting full gay marriage.

Ethnicity is more of an issue. So far no black people have taken part; not a one. That is more of a worry for me as I don't quite no what to do about it. I think I can target gay black men at Pride, but perhaps I will have to resign myself to my respondents being almost exclusively white. Any suggestions would be more than welcome!

Facebook

My study is interested in the life experiences of gay and bisexual men in the UK. In order to get as many respondents as possible, it is important to advertise.

One part of my campaign to attract people to my research questionnaire has been to place an advertisement on Facebook. It is aimed at those who identify as gay, are UK residents.

The potential reach of such a campaign is 191,500 men. In order to keep costs down, on a pay-per-click basis, I’m allowing a maximum of £10 per day and paying up to 40p per click. That translates to 25 people per day clicking through.

Online campaigns like this, I am told, get an average of <0.3% of people clicking on an ad they have been exposed to. As such I’m anticipating about 500 or so responses via Facebook.

Something I had not expected is that those who do ”click through”  do not automatically go on to complete the survey. This means my real cost per respondent is about £1. That in itself is not an issue.

What is an issue is that most of the respondents are under 25. It is of course only to be expected that Facebook is the domain of the young, and if need be my dissertation can comfortably be about the experiences of young gay people. But… that does make things a bit more difficult. By virtue of their youth, they will not have had the life experiences that my hypothesis needs to discriminate respondents by.

Under 25s are less likely to have postgraduate qualifications; biological children, or be in a civil partnership. As I want to explore how life experiences affect behaviour it is something of a handicap.

Still, I can always turn it to my advantage; compare under-25s with their older peers, for example; or focus on the main issues that they raise such as homophobic bullying in schools.

I suppose the non-question I’m posing is how to rebalance responses so that the younger gay male isn’t disproportionately represented.

I have had a number of flyers printed up and I’ve made some progress handing them out in London and Cardiff. I think I need to do more of the same. I need to think about where, of course, although anything that generates responses as an absolute good.

I suppose the real question is does the age profile of respondents matter? Can my research work around a younger demographic than I was expecting? Right now I don’t know. But it’s definitely something to think about.

Welcome

Welcome to this blog. As the headline suggests I am doing a research degree in public policy and I’m currently doing my dissertation research.

The dissertation topic is relatively simple. Do gay men’s life experiences affect their behaviours? For example, are people who enter into a civil partnership less likely to undertake risky sexual behaviours; and if so, should full marriage be an policy priority for the government? Are people whose families accept their sexual orientation less likely to behave in risky ways? And if so, does promoting acceptance and equality for gay people pay for itself by reducing the burden on public services?

I am a student at Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, and an employee of the NHS which is part-funding my studies. I chose the topic entirely independently and it relates, if anything, toward my own sexual orientation and my curiosity about similar people, rather than my employment.

As part of my degree I have been encouraged to keep a reflexive journal, in order to help me think about what the experiences I will have doing my research, and direct my own reading and learning in a coherent way.

Your role? Well, I’m putting all this online as I thought it might be interesting. Perhaps… But more importantly whenever I’ve undertaken any kind of major project or research  the views, ideas, concerns and feedback of other people – who are by and large more intelligent and clearer thinkers than me – have always been especially helpful.

In short, I’ll be thinking out loud. If you hear anything worth replying to, by all means do.