Survey Results

As previously stated, I decided to conduct two surveys to help gain a better perspective on two different aspects of the feral cat problem in Broadmoor. The first was targeted to residents of the neighborhood and was at first conducted by walking around and stopping them in the street. However, this was met with negative reactions; people were hesitant to stop and often they refused to answer questions. On one occasion, the interviewee could not believe that "my tax dollars are going to this bullshit." And although I had previously created an online version of this survey, I only knew of a few people in the neighborhood who I could ask to answer the questions. So, all of this posed a bit of a problem.

This was when I decided to ask for help. Luckily, a friend of a friend happens to have a business within the community and he agreed to help me out. He said that if I were to create a small box and print out about 50 surveys, he would make sure they all got filled out. When he saw the box, his one request (sort of as payment) was that he be able to keep the box for his tips; of course I agreed.

What the surveys showed was that most residents indeed knew very little about feral cats, let alone those residing in Broadmoor. The majority also knew nothing about TNR nor the Homeless Cat Network. Although there was a certain percentage who said that they would be interested in adopting a feral but did not know where or how, the majority still showed the serious lack of knowledge on the topic.

The 2nd survey was for volunteers of the Homeless Cat Network. This one also proved to be challenging as one of my panel experts, Melissa Riofrio, wanted to not only add 2 questions but also get the survey approved by the board of directors for HCN. I did not have a problem with this in the least but it was a slow process. Out of approximately 150 volunteers, I received 48 responses to the set of 10 questions. The most important responses to the questions included that volunteers 1) indeed felt that feral cats were misunderstood and stereotyped, 2) would like to see more kids involved, and 3) more public outreach would be a great way of reaching a broader audience.

Although both Melissa and Brigid Duffy had mentioned the significance of educating children during our interviews, I did not really think too much about it until this point. I do think that doing something with children as well as adults could be a very interesting way of approaching this problem.