Information Gathering Activity
An activity that quickly gathers evidence of knowledge of and use of a service
*You will need sticky dots and a big grid drawn up with a list of services, behaviours and actions that can help reduce carbon footprints.
Example of how to use it:
If the aim of your project is to reduce the carbon foot print of you community then you might use this performance measure.
Performance measure - Community members are aware of more ways to reduce their environmental impact and use more of them.
Time: 10 minutes
Why do we like it?
It is speedy and straight forward, it anonymises responses but you can track gender, age or other characteristics if you want to.
How does it work?
Create you grid. Compile a list of services, behaviours and actions that can help reduce carbon footprints that are available in your area, this might include energy efficient appliances, home insulation, solar panels, using public transport, local food initiatives.
Write this list on one side, create two columns one headed ‘I know about this’ the other ‘I do this / have this’.
Give your group sticky dots, if you want to analyse based on gender, age, or any other characteristic you can give different people different colour dots for example under 18 yellow dots, 18 to 30 blue dots, 30 to 50 green dots and 50+ red dots.
Ask them to put their dots in the appropriate square to indicate which services etc they know about and which they use.
Count the dots, this works really well if you want to measure a change it is a very simple activity to do before and after an initiative.
How to adapt it?
You can ask any questions you want and list any factors you want. You could add the option ‘I don’t know about this but would like to find out more’
Why it works
Participants can chose the level of their participation, there is no stigma attached to options as you have to look pretty closely to spot where someone puts there dot.