Dear Cycling and Society,
I am a Geography and Anthropology undergraduate student from University
College London about to embark on my third year dissertation.
I contacted the authors of 'Cycling and Society' in March, to request their
help with participating in the first stage of my dissertation research. I am
posting here now to inquire whether any other members of cycling and society
would be willing to participate in my study.
I plan to do a case study comparing cycling in London and Amsterdam. More
specifically I aim to investigate how people's fears and anxieties of
cycling reinforce it as either a culturally acceptable activity/ 'norm' or
as something to be avoided. Particularly as a mode of transport.
I will investigate this in a two-part method. The first stage of which is a
Delphi Study (http://www.delphistudy.org/about.html. This is where I would
like to ask for your help. I hope to use the Delphi method to create a
typology of fears in relation to cycling which I can then convert into a
questionnaire to administer to the general public.
This method involves asking 'experts' who are involved with cycling in
either an academic, policy or practical nature to respond, via email to two
rounds of questions. After airing your inital thoughts, a second round of
questions enables you to view others responses and respond in light of their
answers and your own views. The eventual aim is to create a consenual
typology of fears relating to cycling.
I appreciate that you are probably all very busy, but would be extremely
grateful if any of you would be willing to participate. I hope to have
conducted the study by mid-end July so that I can begin creating
questionnaires. Therefore, this would give a time-frame of approximately two
weeks for each round of questions. I hope that each stage of questions will
not take more than 20-30 minutes to answer, obviously being via email only,
this gives you the chance to respond when is most convenient for you. At the
end of the process I will of course provide you with the final typology and
if you are interested, my final dissertation.
If this seems improbable, I would appreciate it if you could suggest anybody
else that you may be aware of who you think has an expertise in this area
and would be able to take part. I am particularly interested in anybody with
knowledge or speciality in Dutch cycling.
Thank you very much for your time.
Regards,
Jess Wiles.
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