Geographic location poll

[sqbr]

I've been pondering how to do polls about various things in a way which minimises people feeling excluded or otherwise misrepresented. And I think the easiest way to test those ideas out is make polls and see what people don't like about them!

First off, nationality. As was pointed out to me the last time I tried doing a poll on this topic, just because I've lived in the same country my whole life and fit comfortably into it's majority culture doesn't mean other people's identities are so simple. It struck me that asking where people are currently located is a much less ambiguous question though of course you have to be careful not to then make the jump from "geographic location" to "national identity" in the analysis etc (especially since people might be on a three day business trip or something :)).

So! Please do this poll and then tell me anything about it that bugs you.

Poll #3915

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 39

In which geographic region are you currently located?

Africa
0 (0.0%)

North America
12 (30.8%)

South America
1 (2.6%)

Asia
1 (2.6%)

Europe
9 (23.1%)

Oceania
17 (43.6%)

Polar regions
1 (2.6%)

Somewhere at sea
0 (0.0%)

The sky/Space/parallel universe etc
0 (0.0%)

Other
0 (0.0%)

Using Wikipedia's Regions of the World. I divided North and South America since they are two different continents.

Another different question I could ask is "in which geographic location is the place or places that you consider "home" in some significant way?" but that's a bit vague, maybe.

Any alternatives, extra questions or extra answers etc you think would be better?

Comments

[moonbug]

In a previous place I worked we had "North Africa and Middle East" and "Sub-sahara Africa" as separate locations rather than as "Africa". There were also other sub regions listed rather than the usual 7 continents. This is because we wanted to group where people came from not only in terms of physical geography but cultural geography.

Of course even within a country there are different cultural and ethnic groups that people identify with, which change their perception of "home".

I guess it depends on why you are asking where people are, what are you hoping to do with that data, how is that going to affect what you write/do/talk about/whatever in the future.

[sqbr]

Yes, I thought about those sorts of options, but being very geographically ignorant decided to go with the consensus of the first few "regions of the world" sites I found via google.

I guess it depends on why you are asking where people are, what are you hoping to do with that data, how is that going to affect what you write/do/talk about/whatever in the future.

*nods*

I thought it was worth poking at in advance to get a feel for the scope of the issues, but it's definitely something I'll have to consider the specifics of carefully whenever I make a more focussed poll involving location and identity etc.