Survey
great! where do I sign up???
"Hi, you've never heard from me before and you'll never hear from me again but you're an at-home-dad with all kinds of time on your hands and nothing better to do so take my survey its only a hundred questions so it should only take 15 minutes or an hour or so to complete unless it crashes then you'll have to start all over but that doesn't really concern me because it's your time and you have lots of it and if I do get some results from my survey I might do something with it maybe write a paper or something but I might decide that writing a paper on at-home-dads is lame cause nobody really cares about some loser guys pretending to be wonder-dads when really they are just a bunch of slackers who couldn't hold a decent job but hey now that does sound kind of interesting I bet I could write something kickass on that but either way it doesn't matter cause its a win-win for me cause I can always sell the survey results and make a couple of bucks if I don't do anything else but anyways thanks for doing my survey I guess and I'll be going now and please don't try and contact me about the survey results and my paper cause I'm pretty busy and don't really have time to talk to you after you've helped me out and that's why I'm using a throwaway email address and really I don't think you'd be able to understand my paper anyways because it is college level course anyways so I won't bother posting anything again because really it would totally smack of effort to do so and it should just be enough for you that somebody pretended to actually care about your pathetic little lives for just a few minutes."
www.takemytotallycoolsurveyhere!.com
just my pet peeve...
Hi Melody.
Just speaking for myself, I am sure your intentions are probably noble and your husband is a good dad - you just have to realise that you're not the first person to have the insight to survey AHD's. I've been around these AHD forums and internet groups for a few years and there seems to be a constant request for surveys and questionnaires. The one commonality is that the requests are always a one way street - like I read yours, it is give me your time and information and I will give you nothing back. I have yet to see the results of a survey or a copy of the paper or thesis or whatever else is being "researched". All I'm looking for is "thanks for helping out - here's the data I collected, it might be interesting to you. I'll post my paper on completion".
Rant off.
More info would help.
Melody:
Like Tim, I've participated in the at-home Dad community for a number of years, and "we" -- the collective at-home Dad community -- are indeed burnt-out on out-of-the blue survey requests that provide limited information about the survey or the surveyor. It would help your endeavor tremendously if you would provide a more thorough introduction both to yourself as well as your survey. The folks who have had the best response to recent survey requests (more than 200 respondents for one last year) have provided substantially more information up-front about the survey in their initial request...what is the specific purpose of the survey, what is hoped to be discovered, who is the survey for, who is the professor/class it is being written for, was the research method approved by a university research board, will the results be shared with participants and/or the community at large, etc. It might also help if you can show that you've poked around to find some of the existing research (recent study at Texas, Austin, for example) so that we know we're participating in something new and not just re-inventing the wheel yet again.
These responses may have caught you off guard, but please remember you have approached us essentially no differently than a telemarketer calling at the kids' bed-time, or canvasser ringing the doorbell just as we're trying to get dinner on the table for a pack of kids in the thick of bewitching hour...
Hmm, you may already have enough info to write a great paper about the methodology of approaching a potential survey group! :-)
- Andy
____________________________________
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kcdad/
There was a slight bias in
There was a slight bias in many of the questions that assumed that the choice to be an at-home parent came after having kids in the family.
We made the decision before the birth of our first child, so I can't make comparisons about the raising of my kids before my decision to stay home... because there were no kids. You may find that many of the Dads answered "neutral" for lack of a better selection.
agree with ticktock, some bias issues
Melody:
Thanks for your detailed answers...I've returned the favor and completed the survey. I agree with TickTock...there are a number of questions that are possibly going to skew your results. In questions 3, there is no check box next to "other"...I filled my proper response in the field, but had to check "not applicable" for the survey to let me continue. Questions 8, 20, 27, 28, 29 all presume that the Dad did not decided to stay at home until after birth -- well after in the questions about kids' social interactions since that implies an older kid. This is going to badly skew your data...I don't know the %, but many at-home Dads have been home from day 1 of kid 1, so there is no appropriate answer to those questions....like ticktock, I choose "neutral", but that will still mess up the data. Question 26: unclear how to answer...you are getting at how the closeness changed, but I'm not sure how to answer it relative to question 25. Question 43 is n/a, for me, but there is not way to indicate that.
Two other pet peeves: one major, one minor: the at-home Dad community has discussed acronyms ad nauseum...in general, we really do not like to be referred to as SAHDs...sounds too much like Sad, and (this is a common observation among at-home Moms too) there is absolutely nothing "Stay" about being an at-home parent anyway. My mechanic would laugh at that one (15000+ miles annually on the car, up 300% from before kids). The generally preferred monkier is "at-home Dad", no acronym.
Minor pet peeve: pull out your Strunk & White, bone up on apostrophes please! "Dad's" is singular possessive, "Dads" is plural, " Dads' " is plural possessive.
Good luck to you, look forward to hearing about your results.
- Andy
Rock On!
Andy, way to go Grammar 101 by an At Home Dad! This shows we are paying attention to the little things and if she cannot apostrophe correctly, it shows us the professional quality of her product. I was not going to get involved in this thread but after reading your post reply this last go round, I had to get my two cents in.
I guess it bugs me to no end that we get moms dropping by every now and then and talking how they are considering having dad stay home with the kids and are doing a survey or just ask silly questions if they aren’t savvy enough to POST. If she asked herself that same question the answer would be the same, (I think I’ve seen at least 2 or 3 posts for mom research on dads since this sites been active}. It is as if we are still an oddity and they are thinking outside the box in doing so. If that is the case, we have been outside the box for years, and know what? Pampers fasten the same way when dad does it, and yes we get some on us at times, as well.
On the survey I was doing, I ended up pulling it off line and thanks to all who took it; it stalled out at just 29 responses with over a 2200 visits in the 6 weeks it was living. With just 29 results, it was hard to see any trends other than dads are not into survey taking; and the maintenance involved, it just was not worth the hassle of keeping it alive.
So I took the survey
Cause Ive been reading about it here and at chicagodads.org
Anyway a few things, first:
* SAHD doesn't really bother me. I don't know if it bothers "most." For what that is worth. (However misplaced apostrophes are bothersome.)
* I don't feel inundated by surveys on this or any other site. Heck we don't have to take them...as MileHi Dad has shown. Like it or not we are still unusual in the world...what were we listed as less than 250,000 in the ENTIRE US in the last sentence. So cut her a break on the interest factor.
Now regarding my feedback:
* It seems that the survey is very much based on your own needs/experiences/discussions about whether your husband should be SAHD. That definitely reflects in some of the questions that reference older children.
* I would not have used a Lickert Scale to determine most of the responses. Yes or No would have sufficed. i.e. Did you make more money as a family before becoming a SAHD? How can you Strongly Disagree?
* Questions are redundant. Even if they are the opposite questions. There is no need to ask if we made more money before I became a SAHD, then ask if we've made less money before I became a SAHD. If I made more money before then I cannot have made less money before. You can ask:
Did you make more or less money before becoming a SAHD?
If more, how much?
If less, how much?
* Personally I think you wasted two questions when you asked whether we think moms or dads should stay home. Maybe there are others who would agree or disagree with either but I put neutral but I don't think it made sense.
* Finally after having taken your survey I don't know what you were really looking for. Did you want to find out if we were as involved with our own lives as before? As our children's lives?
I think most of the negative comments you have received are a bit harsh and I don't want to give you the idea that we like to bite the heads off any mom/woman/non-SAHD who stops by. My issues are more with survey design than for your presentation or request.
Josh
SAHD Since August 2005
So how's THIS going to influence their decision!
Hmm, since the whole exercise was partly for her and her husband to better figure out whether he should stay home, I wonder how this experience will figure into their decision! :-) ...I'm guessing it doesn't look good for us, gents...I fear we may have condemned an innocent man to stick with his work grind.
- Andy
____________________________________
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kcdad/
Well...
It seems to me that it should have been him interacting with us and asking questions instead of the wife gathering information then filtering what she deems important then it probably would have a completely different outcome. I know we weren’t completely nice (maybe "we were brutally honest"is a better choice of words)with her but you would think if the dad was wanting to do this he would have interacted with us, or at least flipped us shit for hassling her so maybe it was all her behind his back. Whatcha think?
About MileHiDad
We Dads are Pioneering New Childcare Methods in the Worlds Second Oldest Profession!
What happens if you're in a car going the speed of light and turn the headlights on?
Either you're going to or you're not
Since when did deciding if someone was going to stay home and watch the kids become the result of surveys and charts? Either you want to do this or you don't and the opinions and experiences of other people shouldn't matter.
agreement.
What KevH said!!!
2nd agreement
Well said, KevH... Nothing I read and nobody I asked before doing this prepared me for how it actually is. I was scared to death because so many people predicted I'd be miserable but I knew deep down that I wanted to do it.
(I'm also happy to say that a majority of folks I spoke to were wrong- I'm having a blast)
Shameless plug
Prepared? Never!
although, I do know that when I went to the ANNUAL AT-HOME DAD'S CONVENTION (This year's isNovember 3rd, in Kansas City, MO) before my son was born, I was able to get a lot of good information from talking to the other dads who had been in the trenches for a while before me. Going to the convention gave me, if nothing else, a network of support for guys I could call with a "hey, my son is doing XXXXXX, what did you do when your kids did that?"
Although everyone's answer was different, I was able to use bits and pieces of what I gathered to solve my problems. Maybe this guy needs to come to the convention this year, along with all of the readers here, and build up that network.
Shameless plug over.
Joined: 2007-07-15
Dad Points: 5