Detroit Crime Research Survey - Wayne State University

Hello!
My colleagues and I are students at Wayne State University, and we're doing a research project on the crime in Detroit. Please take our quick survey below to help us with our research!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JGV925S

If the first link doesn't work, try the one below. We are having a bigger turnout than expected. Each survey can only collect so many responses, so we created a second duplicate survey to collect more. Thank you to everyone that is participating!!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/P397SGK

How about a synopsis of your thesis and goals?

Sure thing! Here is an excerpt from our research proposal on the research's objectives:

"The research will investigate the ongoing problem of statistically high rates of crime in the City of Detroit. Aggravated-assault will be examined closely in secondary research, as it is the most prevalent violent crime in the city. The research will overall attempt to meet two main objectives:
1. Through primary research, provide the public with city-goers’ current perceptions of the safety in Detroit aside from the general assumption that people do not feel safe due to the high rates of crime. This will allow researchers to either confirm statistical assumptions or identify a shifting perception that signals early progress in the efforts to change the public’s entrenched, negative views of the city and rebuild from the 2008 recession.
2. Through statistical and perceptual analysis, attempt to pinpoint two geographical areas of interest: the main areas that are constituting high rates of assault, public avoidance, and public apprehensiveness; and the main areas that are constituting low rates of assault, increased public presence, and increased public confidence. This will allow researchers to compare and contrast these areas in an effort to recommend the most effective ways for the crime-ridden, avoided areas to reduce its prevalence of crime, create attraction again for living in those parts of the city, and better the community overall. "

What does the 2008 recession have to do with crime in Detroit?

This is the current draft of our objectives; we can revise and take that part out later if needed. The first objective is mostly about finding what the public's current position is on Detroit's safety as they perceive and why they perceive it that way. I understand why you might feel the 2008 recession is irrelevant to the issue of Detroit's crime itself. There were a couple of thoughts with adding that bit about the recession. We have seen a lot of new economic development in Detroit in recent years, especially downtown and the surrounding areas, that has helped the economy and increased attraction to these areas again. There is a comment section in the survey where participants are asked why they chose the area that they perceived as the safest. One of our predictions we have is that people are starting to feel safer and part of the reason is likely because of the increase in economic development and the economy. We will be able to identify this correlation if a majority of participant's comments talk about the new developments that have been happening. Economic development usually brings increased public presence, and public presence is correlated with lower crime rates. We think that if more people are feeling safer than not, and many respond about the new development, then this would signal a part in the continued progress to rebuild from the recession. Along with that, it would of course also signal progress in changing the public's views of the city. Those are our thoughts about that.

Thank you for provoking the thought! We are a small team of 4 people with a short time frame to conduct the research and write the report due to class time constraints. Feedback is greatly appreciated! This is a research project for our technical communications class, so the research is being done on a smaller scale and a big focus is on our writing and putting together of the final report. However, our team is really interested in the topic that we chose, so we are investing a lot more time and focus on the actual research as well.