CONTEXT OF PRACTICE 3 - QUESTIONNAIRE

As part of my primary research for the module I decided to create a questionnaire for people who have attended previous editions of Boom Festival. 

The aim of the survey is to ascertain a selection of views and opinions from people who have previously visited the festival so I can evidence whether they noticed and/or were affected by the transformation nature of the event and the philosophies so inherent to the festival itself. 

Unfortunately, attendants from Boom Festival come from all over the world, statistics from the 2014 edition indicated that attendants hailed from over 156 different countries, making it very challenging to disseminate the questionnaire to a broad range of people who attended the event.  

Despite the risk of potentially not gaining the responses needed to developed an informed insight from the survey results, I decided to create it anyway and use social media to try and gain the data needed. 

QUESTIONNAIRE QUESTIONS 

Undoubtedly, from my perspective, while at the festival the language that was most widely spoken and understood was English. Therefore, without the opportunity to get it accurately translated into other languages, I composed the whole survey in English in an attempt to communicate to the widest percentage of the audience. 

I started the process of developing the questions for my survey by going through my essay plan and reviewing the main topics covered within the transformational festival section of the investigation. By reviewing and outlining aspects of the study that would benefit with evidence collected form attendants insights I was able to define the questions focuses. 

Once I had outlined the main focuses for the attendant interviewed I started a process of development and refinement until I had a final set of relevant, usable questions.   

FINAL QUESTIONS 

1. How old are you, what is your gender and where are you from?
2. How many times have you attended Boom Festival?
3. While at Boom Festival, what things did you find inspiring or influential? (for example this could be art, performances, the environment or people)
4. While at Boom Festival, did you attend any of the workshops and/or attend the Liminal Village lecture programme?
5. Did you learn or gain anything from the Boom Festival that will influence you outside of the festival environment? 
6. If you answered yes to the last question, please explain what you learned and how it will affect you.
7. How do you see events like Boom Festival evolving in future years?

QUESTIONNAIRE INTRODUCTION 

After developing a set of final questions I progressed by writing an introduction to the survey so possible participants could understand the context behind the questionnaire and have a rough estimation of how long it will take to complete.


INTRODUCTION - 

Note - This survey is specifically for people who have been to a previous edition of Boom Festival in Portugal. 

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to respond to the survey, the insights you will provide are essential in understanding the importance of ‘Transformational Festivals’ in modern society. 

A transformational festival is a definition used to describe countercultural events such as Boom Festival. Such events are founded on positive ethics like community-building, personal growth, respect for the environment, social responsibility, healthy living, and creative expression.

Information gathered from the results will be used to form an understanding of the impact that counter cultural festivals have on their participants, the surrounding areas, and related society. 

The survey asks a series of questions that should take around 5 minutes to complete. 

Finally, information is confidential so no name is required ensuring all responses will stay anonymous.

DISSEMINATION 

As previously outlined, members of the audience I want to address come from all over the world, and so unfortunately, there is no standard way of disseminating the survey to them other that through social media and forums. 

As the questionnaire is specifically designed for attendants of Boom Festival, I decided that the most appropriate area to disseminate the survey was on the events official facebook page. Luckily, the page is fairly active as the page organisers regularly post pictures and posts about the previous events which should help my survey to get seen.

I found three different pages for the festival on of which I was able to identify one as the 'official' page. Despite this, I posted the survey to all three pages to try and maximise the amount of responses the survey received. 

RESPONSES 

Unfortunately, over the time the survey was available for completion it got absolutely no responses.

The lack of results came as a real blow as I was certain that the survey would generate at least some usable information. Below, I listed some of the reasons I believe the questionnaire failed so that in future I can try to avoid the same problem.

PERCEIVED PROBLEMS -

• Distributing surveys on the internet is fairly impersonal meaning people are more likely to avoid responding.
• The survey introduction was quite long winded and could have put people off from responding. 
• The questionnaire was posted to the events 'Posts to Page' section rather than its main wall - Perhaps people do not look at this aspect of the page very often.