Tag Archives: representation

HOW WILL THE SURVEY ENSURE A DIVERSE REPRESENTATION OF YOUTH IN TERMS OF CIVIC ENGAGEMENT PROFILES

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To ensure the survey gathers a diverse representation of youth in terms of their civic engagement profiles, it is important to thoughtfully consider various factors related to survey design and administration that can impact representation.

First, the survey sample selection methodology should aim for a diverse and representative sample of youth across various relevant demographic factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, geographical location (urban vs. rural), socioeconomic status, disability status, and other key attributes. Using a stratified random sampling approach that sets quotas or targets for different demographic subgroups can help achieve a sample that broadly reflects the diversity within the youth population. It may also be useful oversampling certain underrepresented groups if needed to obtain adequate subgroup sample sizes for analysis.

Next, attention should be paid to how, when and where the survey is administered to reach diverse segments of youth. Using multiple modes of survey administration such as mail, phone, online, and in-person can help obtain responses from youth with varying levels of access to technology and connectivity. Surveying at different times of the day, days of the week and months of the year can further aid representation by capturing those unavailable during certain windows due to work/school schedules. Implementing the survey both via schools as well as in community settings can represent both students as well as non-student youth. Engaging community organizations that serve various subgroups can facilitate outreach. Providing the survey in multiple languages known within the target communities boosts inclusivity.

Questionnaire design also has implications for representation. The survey questions should be cognitively tested with diverse youth to ensure they are clearly understood by all subgroups. Using simple, straightforward and universally relevant question wording and response options limits bias. Including questions about key attributes like demographics, geographic location, education level etc. allows for analyzing representation and weighting responses post-data collection if needed. Questions assessing civic engagement activities should cover a comprehensive range suited to capture possible variations in how different youth participate based on their circumstances and opportunities. Obtaining open-ended feedback from youth pilots the option for write-in responses to account for unlisted civic actions.

Efforts are needed to minimize nonresponse bias and ensure views of hard-to-reach youth segments are incorporated. This involves multiple follow-ups via different modes with non-respondents, incentivizing survey completion, allaying privacy/data use concerns through clear and transparent informed consent procedures approved by an Institutional Review Board. Partnering with local community leaders and institutions well-positioned to engage underrepresented youth cohorts aids outreach. Making the survey process convenient and low-effort for respondents by maintaining a short questionnaire length, simple navigation on online/phone versions encourages participation.

The survey field staff and methodology also impact representation. Using a diverse team of field interviewers from varied backgrounds who are fluent in multiple languages fosters rapport and participation. Thorough training equips them to conduct the survey sensitively and flexibly with special populations. Strict protocols on non-biased interactions, confidential handling of data and participants’ rights minimize potential coercion and safeguards vulnerable youth groups. Obtaining parental consent respectfully for surveys of minors follows applicable ethics guidelines.

Once data collection ends, a thorough analysis of respondent demographics against population parameters using relevant benchmark data allows for identifying any underrepresentation. Informed by such findings, responses could be statistically weighted during analysis to adjust for non-response, coverage and non-coverage errors to project a distribution truly reflective of the diversity in the target youth population’s civic profiles.

With proactive measures applied at all stages from survey design to fieldwork to analysis, it is possible for the survey to embrace an inclusive methodology that holistically captures the civic voices and lived experiences of youth with differing backgrounds, circumstances and ways of participating within their communities. A representation approach grounded in key principles of scientific rigor, cultural competence and ethics ultimately creates a citizen-centric civic engagement assessment tool.

COULD YOU EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FACTOIDS AND NARRATIVES IN KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

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Factoids and narratives are two approaches to representing knowledge that have key distinctions. A factoid is a precise statement that relates discrete pieces of information, while a narrative is a more broad, cohesive story-like structure that connects multiple factoids together chronologically or thematically.

A factoid is meant to represent a single, objective factual claim that can theoretically be proven true or false. It isolates a specific relationship between concepts, entities, or events. For example, a factoid might state “Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States” or “Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius”. A factoid attempts to break down knowledge into standalone atomic claims that can be combined and reasoned about independently.

Factoids are formal and dry in their representation. They state relationships as concisely as possible without additional context or description. This makes them well-suited for knowledge bases where logical reasoning is important. Factoids on their own do not capture the full richness and complexity of real-world knowledge. While objective, they lack nuance, ambiguity, and interconnected story-like elements.

In contrast, a narrative is a semi-structured way of representing a sequence of related events, concepts, or ideas. It puts discrete factoids into a temporal, causal, or thematic framework to tell a broader story. Narratives connect individual facts and weave them into a more comprehensive and comprehensible whole. They allow for ambiguity, uncertainty, and subjective interpretation in a way that pure objective factoids do not.

For example, a narrative might describe the events of Barack Obama’s presidency by relating factoids about his election, key policies, Congress, world events, and eventual end of term in order. It would connect these discrete facts with transitional phrases and descriptions to craft a flowing storyline. In comparison to a list of isolated Obama factoids, the narrative provides important context and shows how facts are interrelated in a full historical account.

Narratives are flexible and can be structured procedurally, chronologically, or around central themes. They tolerate incomplete or uncertain information better than objective fact representations. Areas which lack definite facts can still be discussed narratively through speculation or alternative possibilities. Narratives parallel the way humans naturally encode and recall experience as stories, making them intuitive and comprehensible.

Narratives are also more subjective and ambiguous than factoids. The same sequence of events could plausibly be described through differing narratives depending on perspective or emphasis. Core facts may become distorted or reinterpreted over multiple retellings. Narratives are better suited for encoding qualitative knowledge while factoids focus on precise quantitative relationships.

In knowledge representation systems, factoids and narratives serve complementary but somewhat separate purposes. Factoids provide the basic building blocks – the facts. But narratives assemble factoids into a more contextualized and interpretable whole. An optimal system would capture both low-level objective relationships as well as higher-level narrative accounts of how they interconnect.

Factoids could serve as atomic inputs to a narrative generation system. The system would assemble narratives by recognizing patterns in how factoids are temporally or causally related. These narratives could then be used to help humans more easily understand and interpret the knowledge. Narratives could also spark new factoids by suggesting relationships not yet formalized.

In turn, narratives provide a means of testing and validating proposed new facts. Do they fit coherently into existing narrative accounts or require major rewrites? Over time, narratives may help identify factual inconsistencies or gaps needing resolution. The interplay between objective fact-level representations and more subjective story-level narratives leads to a virtuous cycle of knowledge improvement and refinement.

Factoids and narratives provide complementary yet distinguishing approaches to representing knowledge. Factoids capture discrete objective factual relationships while narratives tie factoids into interoperable story-like structures. Both are needed – factoids as definable building blocks and narratives as contextual frameworks making facts more interpretable and memorable to human minds. An ideal system would aim to encode both and allow them to inform and refine one another.