Methods
My investigation will try to determine an understanding of how well Northwood is a commercial centre and satisfies the needs of the local community. I have chosen to do this because I feel it is a relevant question that I can relate to my knowledge of settlements, which I have learned in school recently.
There are two sets of data I need to collect in order to determine an answer to the question; one is to discover what shops/services are in existence in Green Lane, the second is what the local public feel is needed in Green Lane. I will then compare my results for both in order to test the hypothesis.
In order to discover what is in existence I will conduct my own survey of the commercial centre of Northwood, Green Lane.
Transect mapping is when a route is predefined before surveying the area; you can either record what is found directly on the line (a line transect) or you can record what is found on either side of the line (a belt transect). Due to my area of study being a road with shops on either side it would be more suitable to do a belt transect. The width of the belt will be as wide as the street, which may change as I go along but will be OK.
When surveying the transect, for each building I will record whether it is a shop or service. This booking sheet can then be used to calculate the number of shops or services, making graphs/charts simpler to produce in order to gain an understanding of what exists in Northwood.
In order to determine whether a business is a shop or a service, a few factors are considered: how common are these in Northwood and other settlements; what do they provide.
The survey map will help me know exactly what I find on the transect, and then what exists in Northwood’s CBD.
In order to discover what people need, I have decided to research for primary data by conducting a questionnaire in the local community.
A questionnaire is a list of questions addressed to a person; answers are recorded on a copy of the questionnaire. The answers can then be grouped and analysed. There are two types of questionnaire, one where the person being questioned writes down answers themselves; the other has somebody ask the questions for them and note down the answers. I have decided to go with the second option as I can decide what parts of the answers are relevant to my investigation.
A key issue with the questionnaire is that it would be too time intensive to ask every resident of Northwood the questionnaire. Therefore I have decided to conduct the questionnaire on a proportional sample of the local community. The same proportions of age, gender and culture are maintained. This means the process will be more time efficient and still the results should reflect the opinion of the whole community. It will be a questionnaire relevant to identifying the needs of the community. My questionnaire will be conducted on a proportional sample of 40 people. The questionnaire will be conducted by asking members of the public. I will conduct this questionnaire:
- At Waitrose, as I feel this is the one place in Northwood where just about everybody shops, hence I will be able to get a proportionate sample representing all genders and age groups.
- On the high street outside Ask pizza as I feel I will receive a large range of results because many people from different age groups and genders go to Ask.
- At Northwood Metropolitan Station because many people use trains.
Data Collection and Analysis
Questionnaire - Primary Data Collection Method
Please take a moment to fill out this survey. To represent your answer, please put a ring around it where necessary.
Are you a current resident of Northwood?
Yes / No
Gender?
M / F
Age: 1-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 80+
If, still in education, circle one of the following that applies:
Primary School Secondary School College University
Are you employed?
Yes / No
Are you retired?
Yes / No
Are you satisfied with the current shops and services in Northwood?
Yes / No
If no, why not? …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
What shops/services, do you most frequently use in Northwood?
……………………………………………………………………………
Thank you for your time
Secondary Data Collection Method
I conducted a traffic survey to find out how far people travel to come to Northwood. I only recorded stationary cars as moving cars may not be stopping in Northwood but may only be passing through it.
In my results I will fill out this table.
Environmental Quality Survey - Secondary Data Collection Method
I will carry out my Environmental Quality Survey in two different locations. Outside Northwood Station and Boots Pharmacy.
Transect Map along Green Lane
Source: Google Maps
Above is a map of Northwood, with a transect belt labelled in yellow. The width of the transect will be the width of the road. I will compare shops and services on either side of the transect.
Results
Questionnaire at Waitrose:
Questionnaire at Ask pizza:
Questionnaire at Northwood Station:
Traffic Survey on Green Lane:
Transect Map:
The following businesses are on the left side of my transect as I walked down green lane past Waitrose.
The following businesses are on the right side of my transect as I walked down green lane past Waitrose.
Source 1: A shop or a service?
9 4
Environmental Quality Survey
From the table of shops / services on my transect route in Northwood, I created a tally chart. From this tally chart I created a bar chart on Microsoft Excel. (Below)
This Bar chart of my transect route shows that there are over double the number of shops than services. These shops services are almost equally spread out on either side of my transect route. There are also barely any services in Northwood. At this stage of analysing my results my hypothesis is currently proven wrong.
Different roads in Northwood are being labelled at different levels for public parking, with some roads being free to park on, but as you reach the heart of Northwood (Green Lane) the roads become part of the town Centre Scheme meaning only a few permitted cars are allowed to park, and only at high cost. This scheme makes shopping more difficult for those coming to Green Lane by car (because they wont be able to park), discouraging shoppers to come to the area, threshold populations are lowered and high order shops are not attracted, preventing Northwood from fully serving the community.
My Environmental Quality survey below shows that Northwood is generally quite noisy. This evidence is based on Green Lane. This is a main road and is expected to be quite noisy due to the heavy traffic-congested road.
I rated Northwood 7 on smell because it is proven that there is less pollution due to its well situated Metropolitan line station (Northwood Station). Many people use the station to commute, which reduces the quantity of cars and the amount of pollution in the area.
There is quite a lot of space in Northwood as it is not very densely populated with settlements compared to other more densely populated surrounding areas. (Source )
From the location I was conducting my survey, the distance from my location to the station was very little. This is the reason I gave Northwood an eight for Distance from the Station.
Results from all questionnaires averaged:
The above pie chart shows that 28% of people that took part in the questionnaire do not live in Northwood and 72% do live in Northwood. This indicates that not very many people raise threshold populations in Northwood as a result of shopping there. I.e. there is less potential for larger shops and services to be opened in Northwood. This therefore proves my hypothesis correct.
The above chart shows that nearly the same amount of males, as females took part in the questionnaire. This proves that my results are very accurate as I have unintentionally obtained results from a variety of men and women, ruling out the fact that I may have been biased when selecting people for the questionnaire.
The above pie chart shows the number of people in each age group that took part in the questionnaire. Age groups 21-60 are almost evenly distributed on the pie chart. The areas I carried out the questionnaire, ask pizza and Northwood station, generally do not have many elderly people around. This is because it is hard for elderly people to chew pizza with dentures or buy a train pass as they cannot hear the ticket officer properly. This may be an exaggeration but are good reasons for my findings.
When asked: Do you feel that the shops/services in Northwood satisfy your needs?
30% of people said yes and 70% of people said no. This strong factual evidence suggests that many people find that Northwood’s shops/services do not satisfy their needs.
The people of Northwood do not feel it is a flawless area for shopping; it was found that people in Northwood often have to go shopping elsewhere, meaning the shops/services do not fully satisfy their need.
Conclusion and Evaluation:
My finding is that the shops and services of Northwood do not fully satisfy the needs of the local community, proving my hypothesis to be true. The vast majority of my data collected shows this to be the case, as explained in the results. The reason that they do not fully serve the communities needs is that there is no evidence to show tat the majority of Northwood’s residents are satisfied with the shops/services on offer in Northwood. (The local community usually has to commute for these desired shops/services into areas such as Harrow/Watford). This shows that, in Northwood, the public have to shop elsewhere when comparative items are needed (e.g. TV/VCR); this was originally stated in my hypothesis.
The reason there aren’t any high order shops in Northwood, and hence the reason why the shops/services don’t serve the needs, is because of a vicious cycle currently in place concerning Northwood’s CBD; population thresholds in Northwood are not high enough to attract high order shops/services. This means that local residents have to shop in other areas instead of Northwood, lowering Northwood’s population threshold, hence the high order shops (that require high thresholds) don’t set up in the area, and hence locals have to shop elsewhere; and so the cycle persists.
I feel this cycle has existed for a long time. I believe it started when Northwood was first established along the Metropolitan Railway Line in the latter 19th Century. The original settlers would still have shopped in more established shopping areas of settlements inward towards London, i.e. Harrow, Pinner. This meant that there was nobody shopping in Northwood, hence no shops were attracted, therefore starting the cycle.
I feel my project went well, I believe I collected enough data to prove my hypothesis to be valid. I feel I have used both time and resources effectively. However there are a few points of my methods of data capturing that I feel would be reviewed and refined if I were to ever repeat the project.
Firstly I would not do the questionnaire face to face as it proved to be a problem collecting data; it was obvious that people were not comfortable with having to answer questions to a teenage boy/girl, when they just wanted to shop. I felt they were prepared to rush through the questionnaire without giving it serious thought, this proved to be a disadvantage to collecting valid results.
If I were to repeat the questionnaire I would adopt a new strategy and drop it through their mailbox with a letter of explanation. They could fill in the questionnaire at their leisure and post it back. I feel this method would give more accurate results, as people would not feel intimidated. Also by conducting the questionnaire using this method, it could be done on a much larger scale (as no time would be required on my behalf actually asking the questions), meaning more answers could be analysed; increasing the accuracy of the results and enabling a more valid conclusion could be drawn.
Most of the data I collected strongly supported my hypothesis. The questionnaire showed how most people found Northwood not to fully serve them and that the majority of the residents opted to shop elsewhere. My environmental quality survey showed that Northwood has a reasonable quality level and is suitable for high order shops and services. However, this is a problem as threshold populations are not high enough for this, as I have mentioned earlier in this document.
In order to determine a further understanding on the subject of Northwood’s CBD and the structure of its shops/services, I would perhaps conduct an investigation to discover exactly what people bought from Northwood, and what items they went further a field to purchase. This information could then be used to tell the council just what businesses they needed to attract to make Green Lane fully serve the community.
Bibliography
Websites used
Books used
Fieldwork Firsthand-Peter Glynn
Geography Fieldwork Projects-Jennifer Few