Survey Format
Section 1: Demographics
- Gender (m/f)
- Age (continuous)
- Undergraduate student? (yes/no)
- Undergraduate or graduate major (fill-in)
- Terms remaining until expected graduation (continuous)
- What is the highest level math course you have taken? (fill-in)
- How many terms of math since the beginning of high school? (continuous)
- Have you ever taken a Computer Science course?
- If yes, how many terms of computer science have you taken?
- Did you attend the in-class IDAM presentation? (y/n)
- Are you color blind? (y/n)
Section 2: Saturated bar graph of Case I:
Purpose: Can people accurately interpret information presented in this visualization?
Case I: High biophysical costs (no one cares), big socioeconomic benefits (lots of people care), few geopolitical impacts.
- Which sphere of impact are stakeholders most concerned about? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which sphere of impact are stakeholders least concerned about? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which sphere bears the greatest costs of this dam? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which sphere is most important to stakeholders? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which of the negative socioeconomic impacts do stakeholders think of as the most important? (SE1-7: SE2)
- Which socioeconomic impact has the greatest positive magnitude? (SE1-7: SE5)
Section 3: Ameoba diagram of Case II:
Purpose: Can people accurately interpret information presented in this visualization?
Case II: Few biophysical impacts, big socioeconomic benefit (lots of people care), high geopolitical costs (some people care).
- Which sphere of impact are stakeholders most concerned about? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which sphere of impact are stakeholders least concerned about? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which sphere bears the greatest costs of this dam? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which sphere is most important to stakeholders? (SE/GP/BP)
- Which of the negative socioeconomic impacts do stakeholders think of as the most important? (SE1-7)
- Which socioeconomic impact has the greatest positive magnitude? (SE1-7)
Section 4: Present two different dams using one visualization, then present two dams using the second visualization.
Purpose: Determine which visualization facilitates accurate comparisons between the dams.
Question included:
- Which dam has the greatest biophysical impact?
- In which scenario do stakeholders care most about geopolitical impacts?
Sample of students surveyed
- Humanities – Int’l Studies, English, Languages, Education
- Social sciences – NM Comm, Geography, Psychology, Business, Political science, Anthropology, Economics
- Natural sciences and Engineering – Food Science, Biology, Engineering, Chemistry, Math
Survey Results
- Students found the bar charts easier to understand than the amoeba diagrams.
- People like up being up – increasing/benefit is up, decreasing/cost is down.
- Once they had gained more experience with the amoeba diagram, students found it to be more informative than the bar charts.
- Students with experience in abstractions (math) and with reading graphical displays of information more accurately extracted information from the figures.