What type of data will you collect?
In the survey, I would include questions that simply ask whether the individuals feel as though they would be more inclined to change their behavior if the information was delivered to them in various specific forms (posters, social media, etc.) Another idea may be to do a pre and post survey about water usage, and to expose randomized groups to different ways to promote water conservation.

Note: Looking at my post, I don't think that a survey would be the most likely to produce useful results, but I do think that as the first post on this discussion, this is a good jumping-off point.

-Olivia Cameron

In 1-2 sentences answer: 

Considering the narrow scope of Oregon State University, the people being studied will be the students and faculty of Oregon State. There also needs to be a distinction of who is living on campus and who is not because the water usage will obviously be more for someone who is utilizing the facilities almost every day. 

I sometimes get surveys through the University itself in my email about things like mental health and study habits. I think this would be a great way to see how the OSU populace is utilizing water as well as pulling direct information of water usage from the school (if possible). 

I believe that an data amount representative of our 24,672 on campus students and the number of faculty working on the premise (I am not sure of that number). It will be a somewhat large amount of data because we are pulling from different groups and a large sample. 
~Morgan E. De Meyer

Nearby communities may be studied.

Data may be collected via public record.
 
What type of data will you collect?

Type of data collected may include local water usage records.

How much data will you need?
Data within a certain range, or proximity relative to OSU may suffice.

–La‘akea Low

How will you collect data?
In order to collect the data I think the most effective way would be to take surveys on campus, and on social media.

What type of data will you collect?
Via the surveys on campus and social media I would ask the students and faculty if they would be more likely to read information on water conservation if it was on a paper poster, posts on social media or by email to their ONID accounts. This data will help inform the research which delivery method would be the most effective for promoting water conservation at OSU. 

Jeremy Darst     

I think that since the goal is to promote water conservation at Oregon State University, the subjects of the study conducted should be the student population. They are the largest group of people that will be frequenting that location. 

Some sort of questionnaire or survey would probably be the most efficient method of getting accurate results. Ideally, if the survey or questionnaire is optional for students and staff to participate in, they will give genuine responses to questions. 

The data collected will include questions regarding which method ( emails, social media) students and faculty feel would be the most effective at promoting conservation.

Brynn Almodovar

Who will you study?

"Oregon State University" is a very broad subject to pool data from because it generalizes a wide array of people who use water resources differently. I would need to distinguish between who are the on-campus/off-campus students as well as taking into consideration a portion for faculty, staff, and even visitors. Events such as game days and tours dramatically increase water use with an influx of people. It would need to include students, faculty, staff, and visitors.

How will you collect data?

It would be interesting to have each toilet tally the number of flushes per day as well as the minutes a sink or water bottle filling station takes while in use to create quantitative data through the rate of pressure water is being expressed from each faucet/toilet. I realize that this might be a little far-fetched but if I were to do an experiment I would get right down to the nitty-gritty because survey's take too much time.

What type of data will you collect?

I would collect the approximate amount of water in liters to go with the metric system for simplicity, but present it in gallons so the findings are more understandable. Measuring the amount of water during one flush, one hand washing session, or water bottle fill up would be interesting to chart for a day because it could be compared over time and I can only assume there would be trends of spikes and dips during high use game days vs. summer months.

Dakota Steen 

            The target audience will be determined by who the majority users of water at Oregon State are. Likely the audience would be students and faculty on the campus. If you were interested in reaching the most people who consume the most, you would target students who are living on campus and consume a much higher rate of water than the average student who loves off campus. 

 How will you collect data?

I think that the best way to acquire information is through multiple avenues. Email is an easy way to reach the whole population. In conjunction with email, in-class surveys are a way to reach the portion of the student population who do not read emails. 

 What type of data will you collect?

I would ask what would be the best way to reach the students, whether online surveys, printed publications, or emails would be better to communicate something to them. I think that gaining an idea of what the different demographics of the campus prefer would be inciteful to help target those demographics specifically. 

John McMahan

Depends on the target population but I would try to get a random sample that represents the population of Oregon State community. Meaning students, teachers, faculty, visitors, etc that come from different majors, housing, backgrounds, age, usage of technology, etc.

Some ways to collect data could be surveys on campus to see views and knowledge of water conservation.

With enough people interviewed we could could get knowledge gained after message was sent out about water conservation and results of approximate on water conservation as a result in gallons.

-Heidi Gasperetti

Given that we want to promote water conservation at OSU, I will need to study the OSU community. This includes students, proffessors, and other OSU staff. Given that students make up the majority of the population and, likewise, consume the most, they will be the main focus of the study.

How will you collect data?

I will collect data through surveys and questionnaires about people’s water consumption at OSU. Surveys need to be adapted to each study group. The approach needs to be different because of the circumstances. For example, students who live in the dorms might have different exposure to promotion than proffessors. This information should be included in the questionnaire as well. 

What type of data will you collect? 

 The questionnaire should include questions about what they have seen in the past (through different campaigns) and how informative or influential have they been in te past. Maybe even present images of previous posters.

-Ana Medina Roman

 

To measure how effective it is, I could graph month-by-month water use over a period of several years to graph trends. For example, perhaps an email may be immediately effective, but there would be diminishing results over time. Or the opposite may be true. Is there one that is consistent? Another way to interpret success would be to see which building saw the largest decrease in water use on the meters. 

 

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, with water use having seasonal swings, I feel this would need to be a multi-year study to be accurate. Also, to see if the method proposed has staying power.
-Sarah Hackenberg

The most challenging issues in answering this question with my proposal would be in how the participants are sourced.  I would need the cooperation of the OSU administration to obtain information, such as class schedules and e-mail addresses to expose the subjects to the different methods. I would also need a bot or program of some sort, maybe constant contact, to take a lot of the repeat effort out of it (also, to measure if subjects were actually opening the e-mails, social media posts).