My method of gauging people's perceptions of parks was based on:

1. Intercept interviews of park users at my case study parks
2. Informal interviews with people associated with my case study parks

1. Intercept interviews of park users
* Development of an interview protocol
* Conducting intercept interviews of park users at my case study parks
* Compilation of the resulting information using Excel

Development of an interview protocol
There were several factors that influenced the design of the interview guide. Because I wanted to conduct intercept interviews, i.e. approaching people while they were visiting a park, I believed that the interview should be no more than 5 to 8 minutes long (in order to hold people's attention) and should be conducted in an informal, conversational manner. Furthermore, I sought to use simple, straightforward, and unbiased language to ensure that all interviewees would be able to understand the meaning and intent of the questions asked.

I wanted to learn three general things from the interviews:
- What people liked to do at the parks, including how often they came and who they came with
- What the general perceptions of the parks were - people's most and least favorite features, and changes they would make
- What the perceptions of crime and safety conditions were - whether and under what circumstances people felt safe while using the park, and related to this, whether or not they felt that criminal activities were taking place in the park

With the help of Christina Zarcadoolas, Assistant Professor at the Center for Environmental Studies, and the input of several other people, I wrote several drafts of the interview guide. A significant feature of the final draft was that the crime and safety questions were placed in the latter half of the interview, and no reference to them would be mentioned before they were explicitly asked. The rationale for this - guided by Professor Zarcadoolas' advice - was that the interview shouldn't be biased towards the crime and safety issues. In other words, one should try to gauge people's general perceptions first, before asking questions about specific topics, to see what they considered most significant to mention and discuss. If people didn't volunteer their opinions regarding crime and safety prior to being explicitly asked about them, then this would already reveal something important about their perceptions.

I 'piloted' the protocol - tested it to sound out reactions, and therefore target potential inconsistencies or needed alterations - on a few people at Dexter Park one afternoon, and made a few minor changes in word choice and syntax. Thereafter I used the following to conduct all my interviews:
Interview Protocol

I knew early on that I would require a Spanish-speaking person to help me conduct interviews, as several of the neighborhoods where my case study parks are located have large Latino populations. Fortunately, I quickly found such an interpreter through contact with the Met School, a local high school. Carolina Sanchez, who is a junior and fluent in Spanish, was willing to work with me on my interviews, and her participation in my venture became a learning experience for her. I took on the role of her mentor via the Met's 'Learning Through Internships' program, and we worked together to create an academic project for her as an outgrowth of our experiences in the parks.

Carolina translated my interview guide into Spanish:
Spanish version of interview protocol

Conducting the interviews
The interviews were carried out at my six case study parks from late summer to early fall (essentially, the end of August through to the middle of October). Carolina joined me on the majority of my visits to the parks, although I usually visited Fargnoli Park in the Elmhurst neighborhood alone (Elmhurst is a predominantly white, English-speaking neighborhood). For the most part our interviews were conducted in the afternoons, as this was the time we found the greatest number of people in the parks. We would randomly approach a person, briefly describe what we were doing (this was usually phrased as "We are doing a project that is trying to find out how people feel about the parks"), and politely ask if they would consent to being interviewed for a few minutes. We wrote responses directly onto interview sheets on clipboards. After each Spanish interview that she performed, Carolina would translate the responses directly onto the sheets

The interview process was more time-consuming than originally anticipated, as there were times when we encountered few park users, and spent more time driving to and from the different parks than actually executing interviews. However, this gave us time to become familiar with the surroundings and experience the parks for ourselves. Occasionally we would even act as park users, by sitting on a bench in the sun or throwing around a Frisbee, and I felt that this was an important component of enhancing our own understanding of the dynamics of the parks.

Compilation of interview information using Excel
I produced an excel spreadsheet for each park in which each column represented one question or sub-question, and each row represented one interviewee. Then, I recorded the responses to the questions in the relevant columns. In this format, it was easy to interpret and analyze the information.

2. Informal interviews with people associated with my case study parks

To get a more complete understanding of the unique dynamics of my parks, I interviewed the following types of people that are associated with each case study park (or at least with the neighborhood in which the park is located):

Community groups/non-profit organizations
Community police
Parks Dept. and Recreation Dept. administrators
Community residents

In addition to obtaining more knowledge on the programming, salient issues, and improvement efforts at each park, I sought different perspectives on the parks than I might otherwise receive from merely talking to the park users.

Bob McMahon, the Deputy Superintendent at the Parks Department identified most of the potentially interesting people to interview at each park - his list of recommended people ws my starting point. Then, from actually performing some interviews, I gleaned the names of other people that could also be informative.

All the interviews were informal and primarily conversational in nature. I would bring a list of questions to ask and use these to guide the discussion, writing down interesting points along the way.