Week 7: Methodology
Hey everyone! Welcome to Week 7 of the senior Project blog! I will be talking about the methodology that I used for my project this week.
The methodology includes passing out a survey to the undergraduate students at ASU and Gateway Community College through their respective professors. The professor at ASU teaches Introduction to Sustainability and Future Thinking & Strategies. The professor at the Maricopa Community Colleges teaches General Biology and Environmental Sciences. Because both these professors teach classes that are environment related, their students might have a bit of background knowledge regarding e-waste. While this might slightly skew the survey results, it won’t be a major issue because many of the students have a variety of majors, i.e. from Business to Nursing. For answering the survey, the students will receive extra credit.
The survey responses will remain anonymous, and if the students choose not to answer certain demographic questions, they have the option to skip them. The survey tests various factors and opinions about awareness, willingness to pay, environmental concern, etc., and correlates them to how interested the students are in participating in e-waste management. These factors were chosen based on the TPB model (Theory of Planned Behavior), and were loosely based off of the survey in the publicly available journal article: Survey and analysis of consumers’ behavior for Electronic Waste Management in Bangladesh.
Additionally, although e-waste includes anything with a battery, anything that can be plugged in, or anything that contains wiring, for the purpose of this survey, only personal devices (phones, laptops, Video game consoles, etc.) have been included as e-waste. This is because asking the respondents to count every electronic device (microwaves, hair dryer, blender, washing machines, flashlights, etc.) in their house could be too excessive, and the more things they are likely to miss including in their total count. Whereas, personal devices are lesser in number, so they would count more accurately, and the results would be more accurate.
Next week, we will go into the results of the survey! See you next blog!