How to organise an opinion poll
One of the most useful things we can measure at an In Town, Without My Car! event is the public reaction to the car free zone - what do local people think of it? In past years results have shown the day to be very popular, for examples you can see poll results from recent years (links from the bottom of this page).
Organising an opinion poll at your local In Town, Without My Car! event is not difficult. Please use the standard European questionnaire linked at the bottom of this page.
Please do not alter any of the questions, because your local results will be combined with the results from across Europe.
If you want to add your own questions to the questionnaire, please add them at the end.
Print off about 150 copies of the one page questionnaire (printed both sides) in advance of the day, with a view to conducting about 100 interviews on the day.
Think about offering appropriate raffle prize(s) (e.g. new bike, rail vouchers...) as an incentive to attract interviewees.
Recruit some people to help you with the interviewing - between 4 to 6 people is ideal. This is a good interesting task for road stewards (council staff, local volunteers) who may otherwise be under-occupied...
Give each interviewer a clipboard and pen, and a supply of about 25 questionnaires.
Interviewers should explain to potential interviewees that they would like to ask them what they think of the In Town, Without My Car! experiment in this street, and that this should take about 5 minutes.
These forms are designed to be filled in by the interviewers, they are not for self-completion.
Stress the importance of ensuring that all questions on both sides of the form are asked.
Try to include a good variety of people in the street: all age groups (12 upwards), local businesses and shopkeepers, publicans, local residents, visitors etc.
At the end of the day, interviewers should return all completed forms to the poll organiser.
Enter the data into the spreadsheet provided.
Email the completed spreadsheet to richard.m.evans@ntlworld.com and u.janssen@klimabuendnis.org for incorporation into the UK and European results.
Many thanks for helping with this important survey.
For related documents, pages and internet links, see the column on the right.
