Only a few more weeks to go

This week I sent the last emails and phone calls to stakeholders (expect for those who have said yes and might answer a bit later in November). I was excited to cross “contact missing actors and incomplete surveys” off of my To Do list, but it was also upsetting to accept that some of these people will not take the survey and, even worst, will not give me missing data when they have already started the survey. If I never got a “yes” I can’t be too upset, 100% response rates are quite rare (mine is in the 70’s at the moment). But there are a number of actors, who I have invested time and energy with, who said yes to taking the survey but now, after 8 months of contact and my flexibility, are simply saying “No, I am to busy I hope you understand that I can’t participate”. I know there is nothing I can do, but to be honest, no I am not OK with them not giving me the 5 minutes it would take to complete their answers. Now those data that I did collect earlier in the season are useless.

Still, I have some success to report. I completed one new survey and completed another “on-going” one yesterday (although this one still requires me calling companies for P contents). I also have a survey planned today. These three are not “new” per-say, as they were previously agreed on, but it still feels good to get them done. I have two surveys scheduled for next week, and at least one person who committed to completing an existing survey for the last week of November. I have also gotten a few “yes we haven’t forgotten about you, we will do it” which I will follow-up with, but after that I am done with data collection.

My visit to complete the survey with one of our campus farms yesterday yielded a particularly interesting piece of information. I already knew that one of the other farms on campus supplied a large amount of fruits and vegetables for the cafeterias downtown, but I didn’t know that our other campus farm (the one I was talking to yesterday) actually supplies about 40% of the beef and 100% of the eggs for the downtown dinning services. Amazing!