Assignment Three

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LIS3201 – Research & Data Analysis

Dr. Chris Landbeck

The Forgotten of the Second Floor (Group 5)

26 April 2013

Survey Plan

a. General Survey Plan

Parking at Florida State University can be a touchy subject with students. The refrain is

often heard, “I hate parking!” Spots, it seems, are increasingly tough to find, while more students

pile into brand-new on-campus dorms. Students hate parking—or so it seems. Aside from the

most vocal of students, it is hard to know if there is actually widespread distaste for the parking

system. We hope to discover exactly what the attitudes, beliefs, and characteristics of student

parkers at Florida State are as part of a larger research effort into the efficiency and usability of

parking at Florida State.

In order to learn more about student parkers at Florida State, our research team will

deploy a tested and approved survey to the general population. This survey will measure how

students feel about various aspects of parking, as well as their experiences using the system.

This survey will help the team get a better understanding of whether student parkers really

believe there is a problem, and, if so, what they’d like to see done about it.

The survey will be implemented in two formats: it will be hosted online (we believe this

will be the primary way for most students to complete the survey), and, in order to increase

response rate and awareness, will also be handed out by student workers on campus. Both

implementations will offer a reward upon survey completion of five dollars. These two methods

combined will hopefully yield the results the team needs in order to gather statistically relevant

(and insightful) data to work with.

The online implementation of the survey will be hosted using Qualtrics software on

Blackboard. Students will be given the link, asked to complete the survey, and the results will be

stored with Qualtrics. Once they have completed the survey, an end of survey element will be

added which will take them to an outside page that we maintain; this web page will generate a

random, unique code for the respondent. This code will then be stored in our database, and the

page with the code will direct the respondent to either claim their reward the next time they are

on campus (at one of our survey distribution locations), or, if that is not possible, to call a local

Florida State number or email to have us mail this reward to the respondent. The number and

email address will lead to our office techs, which will be explained further on in this report.

In order to dissuade students from completing the survey multiple times, once the

student claims the reward, the unique code will be removed from our database, and the

student’s name and FSUID entered into the system. Before responding to any reward claim, it

will first be checked that the unique code exists within the database, and the student’s name

and FSUID does not. This will help deter repeaters, but will not jeopardize anonymity; although

the name and FSUID will be stored in our system, the deletion of the unique code ensures that

there will be nothing linking the student to a particular response.

The online implementation will hopefully be the main implementation of the survey; it will

be easy to collect and analyze the results using Qualtrics, and as Qualtrics is integrated with

Blackboard, students may have encountered it before, making it an ideal choice for the task. In

order to prevent catastrophic loss of data for this implementation, the survey results will be

downloaded and backed up onto a local storage device weekly; in the event that response rates

are astronomical, this backup rate will be increased as necessary. The goal of this backup plan

is to prevent unnecessary loss of data while not affecting the ability to respond to the survey; as

a result, the time chosen for this backup will be a time when the fewest students are responding,

as indicated by the first hundred (or several hundred) responses.

Should a student be unable to claim their reward, they will be able to contact students

located at an office on-campus for additional help. These office techs will be students working

part-time for minimum wage, and they will work with the database, manage mailing rewards out,

and enter surveys completed on paper into the system. They will not have to handle the

technical side of the survey; they will not complete the backups (the research team will), and

they will not handle the server hosting our database (an outside team will be retained to do this).

These techs will have access to the database to delete codes and enter names. Even should

catastrophic data erasure happen at the hands of a tech, nothing exceedingly critical will be

deleted, as our backups will be stored locally. The techs will not have access to destroy

anything of great value.

The techs will be students hired from the general population; they will work within the

office space we secure on campus. They will work for three-hour shifts, working Monday

through Saturday 8am to 8pm. Before 5pm, there will be four techs on site to handle the brunt of

the paper surveys, mailing, and calls/emails, and after 5pm there will only be two to finish out

the night.

The online portion of the survey will be advertised (in conjunction with the paper portion)

through various methods; these include emails, flyers, and our on-campus representatives.

Flyers will contain shortened links to the Qualtrics survey that can be torn off and kept for later

reference; emails will contain a link. On-campus representatives will spread information through

word of mouth and small strips of paper with the shortened link. An example flyer and email will

be submitted in conjunction with this plan.

The online portion of the survey will begin the first week of school; however, the first

week’s data will likely be removed as garbage, as the team will use that week to work out the

bugs within the system, determine the response rate, and identify popular times of day for the

responses. The office techs will begin working around the same time; they will be trained in

Qualtrics, and will be able to provide basic technical support. Should anything go

catastrophically wrong, the office techs will pass the calls on to the research team, who will

constantly oversee the first week. Any system errors, large or small, will be handled on a case-

by-case basis. After the first week, the techs will continue acting as basic tech support, but there

should be no consistent or large errors to handle.

The survey (in both implementations) will end the week before finals week; finals week is

a world unto itself, and as schedules are vastly different, the data would be vastly inconsistent.

Therefore, finals week will begin the next phase of the project—collection and analysis. Workers

will no longer work after the week before finals week.

In addition to the online implementation of the survey, there will be a paper

implementation across campus; on-campus representatives will be hired to handle this. They

will be posted in high-traffic areas, including in front of the library, in front of the union, in the

union, and in front of the bookstore. These on-campus representatives will be split into groups:

two will sit at a table, and up to four will walk around directing students to the table (or recruiting

them for the online version with the slips of paper). The representatives at the table will hand out

surveys for completion, gather completed surveys, and check for duplicate completions. They

will also manage the money for rewards, using a locked money box at the table.

The representatives at the table will check for duplicates using a specially-created

Android app running on supplied Android tablets; these tablets will be connected to the internet,

and the app will check for the student’s name and FSUID in the database. Should the survey

taker show up as having already completed the survey, the representative will refuse the

student a survey, and will politely thank them for their interest. Any incidents will be handled on

a case-by-case basis, with police intervention being a last resort but an option.

The money box contained on the table will contain five dollar bills; this money, in addition

to the money managed by the office techs, will be counted at the beginning and end of each

day, and in order to track and manage theft, serial numbers of all the five dollar bills will be

recorded (by the research team) before the survey begins. Any thefts that occur will be handled

with the appropriate authorities.

The on-campus representatives will be students paid minimum wage to work in shifts of

six people for three hour shifts. The tables will operate from 9am to 6pm, Monday through

Friday, at their designated locations. There will be three tables set up; one in the union, one in

front of the bookstore, and one near the entrance to the library. Permission will be required from

each of these locations (and/or maintenance) to set up tables in these locations. Reservations

may be required for Market Wednesdays.

In addition to the tables, two to four representatives will be dispatched to walk around and

approach students; there will be two in front of the library, two in the union, two in front of the

union, and two in front of the bookstore. They will hand out slips of paper containing the

shortened URL for the parking survey, and if they are able to engage students, will direct them

to complete the survey either online or at the table. Should students be hostile, cases will be

handled individually, with the representative’s safety considered the highest concern.

The two implementations of the survey, in conjunction with the combined advertising, should

hopefully result in enough data to compile and analyze at the end of the semester. As this will

occur during only one semester, any catastrophic failures will result in re-trying the survey a

different semester. The survey will require some specific permissions to function; these

permissions include, but are not limited to: the President and any related administrators, for

high-level knowledge and approval of the research; Transportation Services and any related

administrators or entities, for immediate approval and knowledge of the research, as well as

promotion; the Union, the bookstore, and the library, for permission to place and operate tables;

the Provost, for knowledge and approval of the research; the Research Ethics body on campus,

for scrutiny and approval of the survey and all other research methods; the legal team, for

preparation in case of any legal allegations; academic spacing, and/or any related/necessary

entity or administrator for office space allocation and telephone line approval; and Information

Services, for access for the tablets, telecommunications and hardware for the offices, and

approval of the use of Qualtrics for this particular purpose.

Overall, the research team hopes to come out of this exercise with a deeper understanding of

student attitudes, beliefs, and feelings towards parking at Florida State; it will provide the

research team with statistics to back up their presentations to appropriate administrators, as

well as providing the team with an understanding of what the issues are that are most important

to the students. With this information understood, the team will go on to conduct further

research, and will base suggestions and conclusions at least in part on these results. The

importance of these surveys cannot be overstated.

b. SWOT Analysis

Strengths

Throughout the survey deployment, management, and analysis, the team will rely on certain

strengths that both we and Florida State possess. These strengths will aid us in all aspects of the project,

and will make our jobs much easier. These strengths include:our organizational skills, so that the process

will be smooth, documented, and organized; our ability to think on our feet, which will aid in any and all

situations that arise; our technological literacy, which has aided in designing and developing the survey

plan, and will aid in deploying, maintaining, and supporting the surveys; the resources Florida State

provides, including Qualtrics for the surveys, office space for the office techs, and the technological and

monetary support they will provide; the ability to work with Transportation Services to reach a large

audience and greatly increase our rate of responses; the ability to utilize the foot traffic on campus

through tabling thanks to maintenance and spacing permissions; and the ability of the team to work

together and create a feasible plan, and to coordinate on the deployment and maintenance of the survey.

Weaknesses

However, there are some weaknesses that may hinder or make the survey process more difficult.

These weaknesses are organizational in nature, and can be managed and/or fixed. The most important of

these weaknesses is funding; while Florida State will provide the team with funding for the project, they

may not provide us with enough. In addition, Florida State may not be able to provide us with the office

space or physical resources necessary to complete and maintain the project; while we will apply for these

resources, it is possible that they may be allocated elsewhere. Finally, the team may be faced with

impatient students; while the survey is not terribly long in nature, the students may not have the attention

span or drive to complete it as necessary. With some management, these weaknesses can be reduced or

eliminated.

Opportunities

Fortunately for the team, there are several opportunities presented to us by the student body and

the university; these opportunities were neither planned nor controlled, but will, nonetheless, make the

deployment and maintenance of the survey far easier. These opportunities include: a large population of

students that are on campus during the day, allowing us to reach a much larger population of students for

survey completion; a population that is computer literate, which will allow us to deploy the survey online,

and have student workers who understand the basics of technology; a large population of students in

general, which will make it easy for us to interview and hire student workers for the survey; a student

population motivated by money (which is to say, a student population that will respond positively to

money), which will allow us to both hire necessary workers and get students to complete the survey; and,

finally, Florida State's status as a research institution, which will help us gain access to the necessary tools

to create, deploy, analyze, and understand the result of the surveys. Overall, these opportunities will aid

the research team greatly in the survey process, though they were by no means created by the research

team for this project.

Threats

Unfortunately, there are also some threats to the project that, while impossible to eliminate, can

be managed to a degree. These threats can come from many places and people, and may have a significant

impact on the project. These threats include: a largely apathetic student body which may not be willing to

participate in the survey; pushback from various people and entities (including Parking Services and

administrators) who do not want the current parking system changed for reasons including it being

difficult and expensive to implement; the loss of workers, whether due to workers leaving or us having to

fire them; unrest among the research group, which could grind the project to a halt as we determine the

best course of action; and the inability to hire enough workers, due to the semester-long work and the

demanding positions. These threats cannot be wholly eliminated, but they can be managed with some

work from the team.

c. BOSCARD Report

Background

The research team is conducting these surveys because we would like to find out if there are any

secondary factors that cause inefficiencies in the parking system, and if there are, we would like to

identify what they are. To that end, the research team is conducting large-scale research, which the

surveys are an integral part of. With the surveys, the team hopes to identify the factors that negatively

affect student parking at Florida State, as according to the ones who use it most: the students.

With this research, there are several parties that will benefit; the first and most important is the

students. By discovering what the students feel are the biggest problems with the system, the team can

make student-centric recommendations to the university. The university itself will also benefit; with the

research conducted here (and throughout the larger research endeavor), the parking system can be

scrutinized and made more efficient, resulting in fewer problems, a better system, and happier students.

Furthermore, the university will gain if it makes any changes or updates to the parking system in the

future; by having the cache of knowledge to draw from, the administrators will have a guide for where

and how to build new parking lots and/or structures. And finally, in a more immediate sense, any future

research will benefit from these surveys; by identifying key problems and attitudes now, future research

will be more directed, and will have a more meaningful contribution to the subject as a whole.

Objectives

Our objectives for this project are multifaceted. First, we seek to identify any potential problems within

the parking system at Florida State; second, we seek to gather information about student attitudes, beliefs,

and behaviors regarding parking at Florida State; third, we seek to understand characteristics about

student parkers at Florida State; fifth, we seek to gather meaningful statistics about parking at Florida

State; and finally, we seek to discover trends about attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors when it comes to

student parkers at Florida State.

Scope

The research we are conducting is split into various directions; these surveys are aimed entirely at

student parking on the main Florida State campus. As a result, anyone who parks in student parking is

considered part of the population; it does not follow, however, that the population includes all students.

The scope for this research also does not include faculty parking, visitor parking, or any other kind of

parking on campus; it furthermore does not include students parking in faculty lots. It finally does not

include any other parking off campus, around Tallahassee, or anywhere else in the world.

Constraints

As this project progresses, it will be constrained by various factors outside of the team’s control.

These constraints cannot be removed, and must be considered as part of the project’s error. There are two

main constraints specific to these surveys; they are: that the population is reduced due to some students

not having cars (or parking on campus), and that because some students only park on campus at specific

times of day (really early in the morning, for example, or only at noon), their responses will not be

broadly applicable, but rather, only truly relevant for the time during which they park. These constraints

are joined by constraints that plague all survey projects; these include that not everyone in the population

will respond, and that the most vocal will be the most likely to respond, leaving the results possibly

skewed towards those with the strongest feelings. These are true of all surveys, and have been taken into

consideration when designing the survey plan.

Assumptions

Throughout this project, we make a variety of assumptions; as these affect what we choose to do

and how we choose to do it, they are important to note. For starters, we assume that we will be able to get

enough responses to be statistically relevant; we also assume that our survey instrument is free from bias

(it has been tested), and is as accurate as possible (questions are worded the most efficiently, etc.). We

also assume that our respondents will not lie or be untruthful in any way. We furthermore assume that the

majority of students on campus drive a vehicle (or at least park one somewhere), and that if there are

other groups of people who park in student parking, they are so much in the minority that their responses

can be disregarded. Finally, and most importantly, we make one large assumption throughout all of our

research on this topic: there are not enough parking spots on campus (that is to say, there most certainly

are inefficiencies in the system). It is important to keep these assumptions in mind when evaluating our

plans and our research, as they are the basis for a great deal of our decisions.

Risks

Like almost anything in life, there are certain risks with taking on a project of this magnitude.

There are some general risks, including that there will be a catastrophic natural disaster (or something

similar) that will greatly affect the Florida State main campus; this will shut down our research, but will

be far out of anyone’s control. There are also risks more specific to our situation; these include: that the

attitudes, belies, and/or behaviors regarding parking may change throughout the semester we are

surveying the students; that the method of survey deployment may actually hinder the response rate

(people will not like being chased after for some reason); that during certain parts of the semester, we will

simply not get many responses (could be for almost any reason, including that students stop going to class

and therefore stop interacting with our advertising); and that although certain students do have a parking

pass, they may choose other methods of getting to class instead, making them irrelevant to our survey.

These risks cannot be removed entirely; but for each, the team can think on their feet and react; for

example, if response rates slow at a certain part of a semester (and the team suspects slipping class

attendance), an email can be sent out to remind students who do not visit campus that this survey exists.

In addition, if attitudes, beliefs, and/or behaviors change greatly over the course of the semester, the team

may have to re-do the surveys, this time at specific parts within the semester. However, if something like

a catastrophic natural disaster occurs, the only true response is simply to scrap the data and try again

much later. Overall, these remain simply risks for the time being—they are not guaranteed to happen.

But, if they should, the team will evaluate the situation and act in a way that is the most appropriate.

Deliverables

This project will produce many deliverables over the course of the semester. The first one is this

plan; the second one, of course, is the actual survey instrument, set up and ready to be deployed. The team

will then produce survey results over the course of the semester; finally, the team will put together a

detailed survey report for presentation to appropriate individuals.

d. AOA Diagram

See attached file.

e. Email and Flyer examples

See attached files.

f. Survey Instrument

This link will take you to the team’s survey, hosted on Qualtrics: https://fsu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_aboe2FdHfvU2J2l

Interview Plan

a. General Interview Plan

The research team would like to understand parking at Florida State University from the

students’ perspective. In order to do this, the team will conduct a series of interviews with a

variety of students; these interviews will gather more in-depth information on the beliefs and

attitudes of student parkers. The interviews will be collected and analyzed, and relevant quotes

and ideas will be used to guide both future research and future recommendations. The

interviews are very important in getting a full picture of parking at Florida State.

The interviews themselves will take place on campus in office space provided by Florida State.

The interviews will be short, less than an hour, and for successful participation, the students will

be rewarded with ten dollars. Students will collect this reward as they leave the interview itself.

The interviews will be recorded using audio-visual recording software; this choice was not made

lightly, but was made so that the interview could be most accurately reviewed at a later time.

Several team members may watch the interview, though they were not present; this allows the

team to get the fullest level of analysis possible for the interviews. As a result, this method of

recording was deemed to be the best.

The recordings will be stored on local storage, and will be accessible only to the members of the

research team; examinations of the interviews will happen on a weekly basis (including

transcription). The examinations will also be stored on local storage. This local storage will have

backups written biweekly.

The interviewees will be recruited through a combination of methods. These include: the use of

flyers, the use of social media to promote the interviews, an email sent out by Transportation

Services (that the team writes, which is then approved), mailers to students living off-campus,

flyers on car windshields, and chalk advertising. Each of these methods is discussed as

necessary in the following paragraphs.

Flyers will be created by the research team, and a group of student workers (working part-time

and paid minimum wage) will be hired to distribute these flyers; they will go around to approved

bulletin boards during their shifts and will place the flyers as necessary; in addition, they will

then go to assigned parking locations and stick flyers under the windshields. The student

workers will work in teams of two per lot/garage; they will work for three hours (12pm-3pm,

busiest time of day) and will flyer as many cars as possible. If people approach the flyers team,

they will be handled on a case-by-case basis; if students are angry, the workers will be

encouraged to walk away and contact the police as necessary, and if they are curious, they will

explain the research to the students. The safety of the workers is the highest priority.

These flyers will only be distributed on a monthly basis; students will work on one or two lots a

week, making their way around the entire campus over the course of a month. The flyers on the

bulletin boards will be slightly different from the flyers on cars in that the flyers on bulletin boards

will have tear-offs at the bottom containing necessary contact information; the ones on

windshields will simply contain one copy of this information. These flyers will be distributed to as

much as the cars on campus as possible.

In addition to flyers, mailers will be sent out to students on campus every month or two. These

mailers will be put together by our office techs (discussed later in the plan), and will be mailed

out to students with a local address on file. These mailers will be the same fliers that are posted

on the car windshields; a member of the research team will collect the flyers when they are

done and send them through a local post office. These mailers will not be often, however, as

students will be receiving so many other requests to participate.

Three less-intensive forms of recruitment will be an email by Transportation Services, chalk

advertising, and social media advertising. The team will write the copy of an email for

Transportation Services to send out; once approved, it will be sent to the entire student body.

The endorsement from Transportation Services may be important to convince some students

that the interviews are of great importance to the future of parking; as such, the team feels this

email will be a key strategy in getting interviewees. In addition to this email, the team will write

chalk advertisements in various spots around campus; the content of the chalk advertisement

will be the copy of the flyers. Finally, the team will maintain a Facebook page and a Twitter

account, and will post to and tweet at various Florida State groups in order to reach a large

audience of students.

Hopefully, these methods of advertising will come together and create a pool of interviewees for

the research team. The interviewees will be asked to call a number or send an email to a

particular address, and both of these forms of communication will lead back to the office techs in

the office space the team maintains. These office techs will be students working part-time and

paid minimum wage; their job will include talking to interviewees and scheduling interviews. The

office techs will also send a reminder call to the interviewee a week before the interview, and

will call to follow up after the interview is completed as necessary. The office techs will work

three hour shifts from 8am to 8pm; they will work in three hour shifts, with four office techs on

site at any time. The techs will also hold onto the reward money; to deter theft, the money will

be counted each week and the serial numbers will be recorded before the interviews start. The

office techs will be a very integral part of the success of the interviews.

The interviews will require permission from several important entities in order to be successful.

Transportation Services will have to be on board in order to send out the emails for recruitment;

the President, the Provost, and other high-level administrators must be made aware of the

research, if nothing else so that the importance of the research team’s work is understood. The

Research Ethics body for Florida State must approve all methods and instruments used;

furthermore, the legal team should be made aware of the research in case of any problems.

Finally, maintenance and police should be made aware as a courtesy; people will be going in

and out of the office space constantly, and there will be people wandering around parking lots

and garages, so it is best both these entities are made aware of the situation. Overall, with the

cooperation and support of all of these people and entities, the research will be a success.

The interviews are vital to understanding the bigger picture—it will uncover how students really

feel about various aspects of student parking, and why they feel that way. Once the research is

completed, the analysis will prove to be very important every step of the way in future research.

With luck, the interviews will go well and will provide excellent insight.

b. SWOT Analysis

Strengths

The research team and Florida State possess many strengths that will help guide this

research to success. These strengths include: the team’s organizational skills, which will help

keep the team focused, on task, and successful, as well as allowing for neat organization of all

interview-related materials; the team’s ability to think on our feet, which will aid us in conducting

the interviews (responding to questions as necessary) and in case of any contingencies; the

team’s ability to work together as a group, so that we all agree on direction and actions; the

team’s technological literacy, so that we can accurately store, retrieve, and analyze the audio-

visual recordings of interviews; Florida State’s spacing and monetary resources; Transportation

Services’ ability to contact a large number of students and be seen as a reputable entity;

manpower (hiring a lot of students for not a lot of money); being good listeners and being

people-people (allows us to conduct excellent interviews); and having analytical skills, which will

allow us to best understand the responses. Overall, these strengths will be vital in the success

and analysis of the interviews.

Weaknesses

However, there are also a few weaknesses that will hurt the team’s ability to successfully

interview students. These weaknesses, with some management, can be reduced or eliminated.

They are: funding (Florida State may have the resources to support us but may choose to

allocate them elsewhere); office space (again, Florida State may have the ability to give us the

office space we need, but may choose to give it to another group instead); and impatient

students (students may not wish to be interviewed for so long; if the team offers a better reward,

it may help). These weaknesses are not critical, though they may hinder success; dealing with

them will not be impossible, but may take a little work.

Opportunities

There are several opportunities Florida State provides the research team that will greatly

aid in the completion of the interviews; these opportunities were provided merely by chance,

and were not artificially created. These include: a student population that uses social media

networking sites, which will allow us to contact a large part of our population via social media; a

large school population, which will allow us to hire enough workers and interview enough

students; a student population that responds positively to monetary rewards, as this will help us

get enough students to be interviewed; Florida State’s status as a research institution, which will

provide us with the tools we need to analyze the results of our interviews; Florida State’s

technological integration, which will allow us access to audio-visual devices to record the

interviews with; and a large population of students who park on campus, which means our

population is large to draw a sample from. These opportunities will make the task of completing

the interviews much easier, and should not be taken for granted.

Threats

There are, unfortunately, some threats which may affect the interviews; these are

beyond anyone’s control, and can merely be mitigated if they occur. These include: a largely

apathetic student body, which will lower our response rates; pushback from various entities or

groups of people, including the university, Transportation Services, or any other group who does

not want to spend the time or the money to improve the parking system; losing workers, due

either to them leaving the job or the team firing them; unrest among the group, which will cause

the interviews to be poorly conducted (or they may cease to be conducted at all) while the group

figures out the best direction to take; and not being able to hire enough workers due to the

nature of the job, or the state of the economy around Florida State. These threats will hopefully

not affect the team, but if they should, they will simply have to be dealt with as they happen.

c. BOSCARD Report

Background

The research team is conducting these interviews, along with other research, in the

hopes of finding and understanding secondary factors that affect parking at Florida State; with

these interviews in particular, the group hopes to get a deeper understanding of parking from a

student’s perspective, including what they find to be the most troublesome aspects of student

parking.

Many groups will benefit from this research; this includes the students, whose input may

result in a much better, more efficient parking system; the university, who can improve their

parking system, or who will have meaningful insights to reference in building new parking

structures; and any future research the team conducts, as the insights and possible solutions

provided by the students in the interviews will guide and inform future research endeavors on

the topic.

Objectives

With these interviews, the team hopes to: create a full picture of student attitudes

towards and beliefs about parking at Florida State; to conduct enough interviews that we are

able to find trends and patterns of beliefs/attitudes; to complete the interviews on budget and on

time; to follow up with data as necessary; and to get a consensus as to what the main problems

with student parking at Florida State are. We believe the interviews will accomplish these

objectives.

Scope

The interviews are focused primarily on student parking at Florida State; as a result,

anyone who is not a student, or who does not park in student parking, is excluded from the

interviews. Furthermore, the interviews are only focused on parking on Florida State’s main

campus; parking anywhere outside of the main Tallahassee location is excluded. Finally, the

study excludes parking outside of Florida State in Tallahassee, or anywhere else in the country

or the world.

Constraints

There will be, unfortunately, some factors that will constrain the team (and our ability to

complete interviews). These factors are: that some parts of the student population will not be

represented because they do not park on campus or do not drive a car (making our population

smaller, and our advertising more specific); that student parkers will not have broad opinions,

because they will be based on the time of day the students park (which means that answers will

be slightly different depending on the person); and that some students do not park enough, or

do not move their car enough, to know enough to be helpful during the interview (meaning we

will get many “not sure” responses out of the students, rendering their interview less

meaningful). There are other constraints that apply to all interviews, these included; they are:

not everyone in the target population will respond, making the sample size necessarily smaller

than the population; some students who are interviewed will be too nervous to give any good

answers; and some students will not consent to being recorded, making the sample size even

smaller than the target population. These constraints are just as important as the ones specific

to our research, and should not be overlooked.

Assumptions

There are several necessary assumptions the team makes about the interviews that are

worth noting. These include: that we will get enough responses that the results will reveal

patterns and trends; that our interviews will be accurate (that is to say, questions will be worded

in the most useful way possible); that our respondents will not lie or answer in any way that is

untrue; that the majority of students on campus drive (or at least park); that staff will not have

much of an opinion on parking (or, if they do, they are in the minority); that there are

inefficiencies in parking; that our questions will be free from bias (or other negative effect); and

that we will have enough time to get the response rate we need. These assumptions should be

taken into consideration when evaluating our plans and results, as they guide most decisions

the team has made and will make.

Risks

There are some risks that the team faces in performing this research. These include:

being unable to gather all the information we need (due to low response rates or otherwise);

attitudes, beliefs, and/or behaviors changing throughout the semester; natural disaster or other

unforeseen contingency greatly affecting the team’s ability to complete interviews; respondents

being dishonest during the interview (due to lack of interest or otherwise); and students having

parking stickers, but failing to use them (they ride the bus, or ride a bike, etc.). These risks

cannot be completely removed from the situation, but the team can respond to them as they

occur; for being unable to gather all the information we need, for example, the team can extend

the time for the interviews to be completed from one semester to two. Each risk can be handled

in a way that is positive and allows the research to still be completed.

Deliverables

Throughout the project, the team will create several deliverables. The first is this plan

document; the team will also create the actual interview script. The team will then create

transcripts and analyses for each interview; and, at the end of the interview period, will create a

detailed and thorough final report.

d. AOA Diagram

See attached file.

e. Email and Flyer Examples

See attached files.

f. Interview Script

1. What year are you?2. Do you live on campus?3. What type of vehicle do you drive?4. Do you carpool to campus?5. Where are the majority of your classes located?6. How long does it take to get to class from where you normally park?7. What time of day do you usually park?8. How long do you stay parked on campus?9. Do you park closest to your first class or your last class?Why?10. In your experience, what is the best time to find parking on campus?Why?11. Has parking gotten better, worse, or stayed the same since you've been at Florida State?Why?12. What time of day do you think most people park on campus?13. Do you think the buses are a good alternative to parking?Why?14. Where's the best place to find parking on campus?

Why? (If not explained)15. What is good about parking at Florida State?16. What is bad about parking at Florida State?17. How do you feel about the current parking fees?18. How do you feel about parking enforcement?How do you feel about parking citations?Is the amount for a citation fair?19. If you could add a new parking garage, where would you put it?20. If you could change only one thing about the parking system, what would it be?Why?21. Do you think carpooling would help create more parking spots?Why?22. Do you think parking is in convenient locations to campus?Why/not?23. Is the time you leave the house affected by how long it takes to find parking?24. How much time do you spend parked on a given day?25. In your opinion, are there enough parking spots at Florida State?26. Anything to add about parking at Florida State?