Gun Control Attitude Survey
PSY/475
February 4, 2013
Deborah Ford

Purpose of Survey * The topic of gun control laws has been a major topic in the beginning of 2013. On December 14th 2012, 28 people died in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut (Technology Wire, 2012). The shooting brought a gun control debate among the United States citizens and the government. The government is focusing on stricter gun laws and possibly limiting the number of bullets in magazines. This survey is to determine the general opinion on gun control laws in the Ajax Company IT department. The employees verbally discussed the topic in the office and different opinions stated about the debate. This survey focuses on four questions that eight employees were anonymously administered. * Design issues in Creating the Survey * The IT department employees at Ajax wanted to remain anonymous during the survey. The group discussed several options on how they could answer survey questions. E-mail was a way that the Ajax employees could remain anonymous with their coworkers, but not to the administer of the survey. Paper and pencil was an idea, however, the employees still did not feel comfortable they would remain anonymous. One employee mentioned that her handwriting was very unique and identifiable, and did not feel comfortable with this method. Because of the small size of the office and the survey administrator included as one of the eight employees, a strictly anonymous survey had to be created. * Specific Instructions for Administering, Scoring, and Interpreting the Survey * The survey administrator found an anonymous testing system that would protect the identity of the participants. An established online survey system was found that allowed the administrator to have full control of the survey and keep the participants anonymous. SurveyMonkey was used as an online platform to design the appearance and function of the survey. The website allows the designer to choose what kind of questions will be administered from multiple choices to fill in the blank questions. Each question in the survey was given a yes, no or true, false answer with all questions presenting a choice of undecided. The undecided was an option because some people are unsure and leaving the participant only two options may be looked at as bias. * The eight employees all received a link in their emails to the survey website. The website presented four questions. The first question asked if they believed the current United States gun laws were sufficient. This question was chosen due to the current gun laws being debated. The results weighed in with two selecting yes, three selecting no, and three undecided. * The second question asked if the statement, “guns do not kill people, people kill people” is true, false, or undecided. This is a popular well-known question that many people have debated. This question will show how responsible the survey participant holds the person or the gun. Five participant’s felts guns were more responsible, two felt the guns were responsible, and one participant was undecided. * The third question deals with a current proposal from the President of the United States. Obama and his advisers have signaled that they intend to push a broad and ambitious set of anti-gun-violence proposals in Congress, including a ban on military-style assault weapons and a limit on the number of bullets in magazines (Rucker, 2013). The question asks if the participant thinks it is unconstitutional to limit the amount of bullets an American can own and bank military assault rifles for Americans. This question is controversial because many Americans think that if the government puts limits on their constitutional rights, it may put them at danger from being able to protect themselves. The results from his question recorded five participants saying yes, two saying no, and one undecided. * The fourth question asked if the participant thought the United States government’s planning and decision on gun control laws are for America’s best interest or their convenience. This question was presented to get a sense of how the participants viewed the US Governments involvement with the debate. Four participants thought the US Government had them in their best interest, three thought the Governments decision was for their convenience, and one participant was undecided. * The survey that consisted of four questions covered the overall attitude of the eight employees in the Ajax IT department. The employees felt comfortable knowing they would remain anonymous which raised the validity of their responses. The survey was designed to be short so it would not be considered time burden when going to the survey site. As the designer, having more than four questions may have rushed the participant’s responses, lowering the validity. The results were shown to the employees after all completed and most were surprised with the responses. One employee commented that it was good the department had such diversity and they thought that’s what makes a great place even better. This survey was successful in the fact that it presented the general attitude of gun control laws in the Ajax IT department.

References
Tragedy at sandy hook elementary. (2012, Dec 15). Technology Wire. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1239717419?accountid=35812
Rucker, P. (2013, Jan 12). Biden: 'no silver bullet' exists for gun violence. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1268767394?accountid=35812