1. I asked a few of my classmates and friends to help me finish the survey, and they were all pleased to help me. Firstly, I did the survey in my class when the class was over; I gave it to classmates who were sitting next to me, and asked them to help me. One of them asked me why I was doing this survey; I told them that this was my homework, and I was interested in the Lubbock water situation. And then some of them didn’t know what fracking was, I just told them that I have no idea either. They completed the surveys quickly and turned them back to me. Secondly, when I came back home, I asked some of my neighbors to help me. Most of them are Chinese, so I just told them this is my homework, and then they quickly finished it. (QK)
2. The objective of this exercise for the ESL 5301 class required the students to hand out and collect surveys which were designed to understand the people's knowledge and attitude about Lubbock’s water supply. Before going out and asking participants to fill out the survey, I made sure that I understood the questions and came up with scenarios which would require me to provide more clarity to the participants. Collecting the survey involved me introducing the topic to the students and the staff in the department of civil engineering. Most participants were mostly students or staff of the department of Civil Engineering at Texas Tech and they volunteered readily to be a part of this survey. Lubbock and its water supplies was not a hard or new topic to most of the people who volunteered to be a part of this survey. But there were a few instances during the process of survey collection that did catch me off guard; in the sentences below I would describe a few of these instances. One of the participants, who had agreed to be a part of the survey, was quick to go through the survey; once this participant had finished the survey the participant was interested to find out what my opinion of the subject was. There was also this other participant who went through most of the survey and then asked if he could be excused from the survey. He went on to explain how the last couple of questions were contentious questions, hence did not want to be a part of the survey. (RS)
3. The survey has 12 questions, not including other three classification options from the start. The survey respondents showed their knowledge and concerns about issues related to water in Lubbock by answering yes-no questions. Of 10 subjects approached, one refused to conduct the survey. The surveys were collected primarily on Texas Tech University campus from October 10th, 2013 to October 17th, 2013. One survey was collected off campus when the collector went to a barber shop. Participants were 8 students and 1 non-student. The first participant was willing to fill out the survey but he expressed annoyance later. Four female students in the library were excited to fill out the surveys. They were very nice and happy to help the surveyor. The only non-student respondent was a worker at Texas Tech University. He was approached in the university library when he was having a quick lunch. Two international participants were the collector and his classmate. The collector's classmate did not know about "fracking" and he suggested that the survey collector explain its meaning before answering the question. The survey collector explained the purpose and content of the survey pretty clearly, so all the participants understood and did not ask anything else. (DP)
4. I've distributed the surveys in my department, Chemical Engineering, and asked some of the staff, faculty and students to fill it out. Nobody asked me anything about fracking or land-watering. They just asked why I was doing it and I responded it's for a course. About students before asking them to fill it out, I asked first if they were from Texas or not, and if they said yes, then I gave them the survey. [N.K]
5. The study is about the water crisis and what the people think about water in Lubbock. The population in this study included male and female, student and non-student, Texas and non-Texas residents from Texas Tech University. Questionnaires were conducted to gather data for this research. Participants in this study were chosen through non-random sampling. First, I introduced myself to the participants and asked them whether they wanted to participate in a study about water in Lubbock or not. Second, I explained a little about the goal in this study and told them to ask any question they wanted during the time they answered the questions. Most of the Texas residents looked really eager to fill out the questionnaire and appreciated my doing this research and they told me they were really worried about the water crisis in Lubbock and two of them told me their neighbors and relatives had moved from Texas because of the water problem. The Texas residents did not ask any question about fracking and it seemed that they knew everything about it. But, non-residents asked me to explain fracking and most of them did not know about the water crisis in Lubbock or they did not consider this issue. Overall, all of the participants looked friendly and nice and no one rejected filling out the questionnaires. (SH)
6. I selected the people who were in the Student Union Building and the Civil Engineering Building. Overall they gave me a good response when they filled out my survey. I was very interested about one person who was talking more how Lake Meredith dried out and why it has not been refilled again. According to his voice Lake Meredith was mainly fed by the Canadian River and collected water by rainfall runoff from surrounding areas. Ute Lake is a big reservoir in New Mexico upstream of the Canadian River before Lake Meredith. When Lake Meredith's water level was going down, Ute Lake maintained its water level without releasing water to the Canadian River. In another case, catchment areas of Lake Meredith, there are small lakes. They collected runoff water and because of the shallow depth of water level water evaporates very rapidly. Therefore Lake Meredith is never going to fill out again. (SG)
7. In order to collect data for the survey, my first step was separating 8 surveys into different categories. I separated them into 4 males and 4 females. Among each category, I wanted two students and two non-students. Among students, USA and non-USA people were required. Then I tried to find people who were suited for each category. I focused on people only from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. After I selected a person for my survey, I gave a brief description about the survey, such as requirement of the survey, and why I selected that person for this. While they were filling the survey, few of them said that they needed to pick all issues for the first question, but they picked only a few, and one said for the eleventh question, she did not need to pick the option “people who water their lawns” because she is also doing the same. (CD)
8. The first place I went for the survey was the bus station near my apartment because there always are a lot of students available while waiting for a bus. They were all very supportive and filled it out immediately except one girl suspected and asked why I did those surveys near the apartment instead of campus. I guess she was worried that I had a scam with some other purposes. After I pointed out where my apartment was and explained the convenience of the bus station to do the survey, she was convinced and filled a survey out for me. However, I couldn't get chances to have a conversations with those students because the buses come very frequently and almost right after they finished the surveys they needed to catch the buses. In order to compare the opinions from students and non-students, I also collected a few surveys from staff in the department of Mechanical Engineering because I am from there and I can easily distinguish non-students there. One of the technicians in the machine shop in ME is very supportive and asked if he could hand it to me later because he needed to finish some work when I went to him. Thus, I collected it later that afternoon from him. Furthermore, the graduate advisor in ME is very aware of the water crisis in Lubbock and she told me that not only did she turn off the water while brushing teeth herself but also persuaded her sons and husband to turn it off. But because of her lack of engineering knowledge, she didn't know what fracking was or the impact of it on water and environment. Therefore, I briefly introduced fracking to her and we even searched online about it. Moreover, she was surprised when I told her that the farmers can draw as much ground water as they want. She complained about the Texas water rights and acclaimed that we should limit the amount of water farmers can draw from their land in Texas. (CL)
9. When I collected surveys, most participants joyfully took part in this survey. I tried to collect various types and ages of people as much as I could. In 8 surveys, I wanted to have 2 students and 2 non-students in a 4 male group and a female group including at least 5 Americans. Since I usually collected surveys in the civil engineering building, it was hard to find female students in my department. So, I visited the office of the Department of Civil Engineering, the library and my apartment leasing office to find female participants. When participants were doing this survey, they typically asked me where I used this survey. In addition, they did not ask me any questions in the surveys. Since many participants were graduate students, they expected that surveys were going to be used in some part of a journal. So, I explained this would be used in a report in the writing class. (MK)
10. To collect my surveys I just went around the school in my other classes with my other classmates and professors. Something unusual that I noticed was, two guys, one from Japan and one from China, know everything about the water problem in Lubbock, even when they study MBA and aren't US citizens. This made me surprised, because I also gave the surveys to Texas residents and they didn't know anything about this problem; they even appeared disinterested (But this is just the people that I asked). Also one of my friends from Venezuela didn’t know too much about the water supply in Lubbock and after she did the survey, she started to ask me about the water, and she seemed worried. That was weird. In general I saw more interest in the people who were not from the US than in those who are US citizens. (JAPC)
11. When I got the survey, I thought that to find 5 Americans would be more difficult than to find international students. As soon as I got 8 survey question sheets, I brought them home and gave one of the sheets to my roommate. I am living in dormitory; my roommate is from El Paso. Although he is a freshman, he knows a lot about Lubbock water. Then, I brought four surveys to find my international friends from Taiwan. When I gave the surveys to them, they complained about me and said is this the way that you treated your friends. They just made fun of me. Even though they complained about me, they still finished my survey, and we had a great discussion of fracking, water sources, and climate change. At that time, I had finished five surveys. The only thing I had to do was find 4 more Americans, so I was waiting in the aisle. Whenever the students went out of the restroom, I begged them to take a look at my survey. If they were willing to do my survey, I would appreciate it. It didn’t take a long time because there were a lot of students going to the restroom. The most popular question from Americans was which class are you taking, and I said “Advanced writing”. Most of them gave me a confused face, but I thought it was pretty fun. Comparing American and international people, Americans know more about Lubbock water. Some of them even studied water supply at Lubbock high school, but this kind of knowledgeable people are just a few.(SYH)
12. All the surveys were filled out by people in my department except for one which was done by the old lady who works in the office of the complex where I live. Therefore I used people who I knew and were available to me. I did not need to talk people into doing it or give them treats, I just asked them "would you mind filling out a survey for me?" and then added, "it is about Lubbock water and takes only two minutes to be filled out". The last sentence was redundant though, by the time I finished the first sentence they were nodding their head as a sign of willingness to do the survey. Despite their initial (pretense of?) willingness, they did not seem much curious about the survey. Even one of them did not bother to flip the paper and fill in the other side! Only three people asked me questions about how they were supposed to answer the survey and two of them asked the same question: they were born in Texas but had spent most of their lives in other places, so they did not know how to describe themselves, Texan or non-Texan? (HS)
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