Field Day #3
Today’s agenda started off a bit different as we finished up going through the coding of our data one full round. When we initially began the data entry, I was expecting it to be very straight-forward, giving every question and answer a variable and it would be as simple as that. However it isn’t as simple as that. While doing data entry, we’ve realized that many answers can overlap and that many answers depend on the previous answer. Therefore, while going through each survey, I found it helpful to not only think about the immediate responses you were reading but considering all variables and thinking of the survey in a holistic way. In addition to some morning coding to wake us up, I also taught Jakob how to cut a mango and we named our “favorite” rooster, Hannibal mostly because he’s been waking us up almost every morning at 3 AM.
The rest of our day commenced as we continued to survey people on St. Croix. However this time, half of our group tried to target more tourists as half of us were stationed on the Christiansted Boardwalk. The other half of us wandered around a shopping plaza but we mostly encountered local consumers. Once meeting up for lunch, it was curious to see that we had begun talking about how we were continuously seeing similar people. It’s amazing to see that with only three full days of field research, we were already beginning to know the local people of the island. This is a true testament to really how small the island is!
After lunch we headed back to our bungalows to do some more coding on our surveys. However on our way back, we didn’t have the best of luck as Paulita’s car got towed, Kate got a ticket, and a hanging branch cracked our windshield. In defense of the people in the front seat, Jason did “feel a disturbance in the canopy,” but as Dr. Yandle put it best, “he just wasn’t specific enough.”
Our afternoon then consisted of us coding away along with several animals who kept us company. This included our good friend Hannibal as well as a lizard who wouldn’t quite leave us alone. And as you can see from the picture below, we were just fine with that.
After getting a little rest from the sun, coding away in our bungalow, we ventured back out to do some more surveying! We also encountered some more wildlife on our way out! Maybe it was the heat that was making us delirious, but we took a lot of entertainment in making jokes of “why the chicken crossed the road” when it was actually crossing the road, stray horses, cows, a three-legged goat (I swear, there’s a picture for proof!), and the famous eagle house (a house surrounded by painted ceramic eagles) which we’ve been passing every time we go to Kate’s house.
After dinner, we continued to survey for a little longer, finishing up one of our longer work days on the Christiansted Boardwalk! Being in the group that had been working in the shopping center earlier in the afternoon, it was interesting to finally see how a touristy area would be when surveying. I personally wasn’t expecting much as I didn’t expect any tourists to want to take a survey while on vacation and I also expected most of the locals to be working around these areas. However surprisingly, while surveying the area, I got many locals and after comparing results with some of my teammates, we found a lot of locals who were living right in the bay in their own boats! I continue to be surprised by the results we are getting. Before coming to the island, I had made a lot of hypotheses and assumptions about how the people would be but am continuously being surprised by people’s willingness and patience to help us with our research. I’m looking forward for tomorrow’s work day as I’m hoping we’ll be able to get more tourist surveys and also look forward to more surprises!