Blog

Mill Hill Broadway

Our Investigation

  • How well does Mill Hill Broadway meet the needs of the local community?
    • How well does Mill Hill Broadway cater for the diverse religions and ethnicities?
    • How well does Mill Hill Broadway cater for the ageing population in the area?
  • Mill Hill is a suburban area near our school
    • In recent years more immigrants have been attracted to the UK and they have brought with them new cultures
    • We wanted to discover how much different diverse cultures are reflected in Mill Hill
    • The UK is also ageing, and we wanted to see how well the area catered for the ageing population
  • We mainly looked at the High Street (Mill Hill Broadway) starting just beyond the station and ending at the A41
    • We looked as some side streets too
    • We did this area because the different shops and services could tell us the most about the diversity in the area
    • There were also more people on these streets to interview
    • Looking at housing would not be helpful as houses look similar regardless of the ethnic group or religion of the person who lives in the house
    • Also, it would be unsafe to knock at doors to speak to the residents

Risk Analysis

  • It is important to be safe in an urban area
    • There are pedestrian crossings, but it is easy to get distracted when with friends or busy recording data
  • Always stay in a pair or small group
  • Wear suitable clothing for the weather
  • Have a phone so that you can call for help in an emergency
  • Take care when crossing roads and watch out for your friends in case they are distracted
  • Don’t approach people who you feel unsafe to speak to.
  • Don’t go into a car or building-other than a shop (or anywhere beyond the safe area we agreed) with a stranger

Sampling

  • For our land-use survey we did the entire area as it was small, but we had chosen the area as we felt it would give us the most data
  • Questionnaires were opportunistic
    • We approached every person who passed us but were only able to get responses from those people who were willing to respond
  • When doing our population survey, we decided not to count any children in push-chairs
  • We worked in small groups to help each other out, and to be able to take measurements when the method required more than one person
  • For our questionnaires we wanted to get a stratified sample by trying to match the proportion of people from different nationalities and ages as represented by the census data
    • This method is very effective as it gives answers that reflect the population that live there but because only some people were willing to answer questions this was not practical, so we used opportunistic sampling
  • One weakness in our data collection was that we went during the day on a weekday when many locals may be at work or at school and some of the people there could be visitors
    • This may make our results unreliable

Our Methodology

To measure

Method and Justification

Evaluation

Types of land use and number of facilities for different diverse groups

We walked along the street from Mill Hill Broadway station to the A41 marking the different land uses on a map. We made a note of any shops that catered for different ethnic or religious groups. We did the entire shopping street because we wanted to be thorough and get accurate and reliable data.

We also looked in some side streets where there were services such as the library and a synagogue to ensure that we didn’t miss any of the services provided.

We were able to get accurate data on the types of shops and services provided and we can compare this with data on ethnicity that we have collected as well as census data for the area, so this method was very effective.

People from different ethnicities

We stood at a busy point in the street at 3 separate times during the day (morning, lunchtime and early afternoon). Each time we took a tally of all the pedestrians that passed us and tried to decide their ethnic group (White, Asian, Black, Chinese, Mixed race.)

We did this so we could compare the population we had counted with the census to see whether the locals were attracted to the shopping centre and how they matched with the services we had marked on our land use map.

We also asked people to self-identify their ethnicity and religious background in a questionnaire. This question was useful but difficult to ask because it raised ethical issues about privacy. We were clear to the people that we asked that they didn’t need to answer this question.

This method was less effective.

Firstly, we had to quickly make judgements about the ethnicity of the people who were passing which could be difficult and we could be inaccurate.

Also, the categories were too broad. White could include immigrants from East European countries, Asians could include Muslims, Hindus or other religions from many different countries, or may be people who had lived in the UK for many years and were integrated into the UK culture. This also applied to the other categories.

Also, it was difficult to know whether the people we were tallying were local or visitors to the area.

So, this method overall was not entirely reliable, accurate or effective

Many of the people we asked chose not to answer the question. It was more accurate than the method above as some people were specific about their ethnicity and culture, but some people may also have lied.

Ages

We got data on this from a questionnaire. We asked them in age bands 18-30; 31-50; 51-70; 71+

We decided 71+ would be suitable as our elderly people group. We asked people if they would mind choosing a category to identify their age and people did not seem to have a problem with doing this.

71+ might not be the right choice to define elderly population. Many people retire now at 67 so that could be an age to choose. On the other hand, many people of 71+ are fit and healthy and not elderly in their health or needs. We had to choose and age, so our choice is slightly arbitrary.

How happy are people about the area?

We asked each person a series of questions about the services they use, how frequently they visit Mill Hill Broadway, we asked them to rate how happy they were with the services giving a score from 1 to 5 with 5 being the best. We also asked them to tell us 3-5 words they think sum up their feelings or thoughts of the area.

We also allowed them to make further comments if they chose to

The questions were chosen to help us answer our enquiry question of how well the services cater to the needs of the locals.

This questionnaire was effective as it gave us lots of useful answers from a range of people and that we could use as quantitative data to create graphs and analyse people’s use and views of Mill Hill.

The “3-5 words” question, together with the comments section allowed us to get qualitative data too which was very useful to get a deeper understanding of different people’s feelings.

However, we don’t know whether people were always honest, and we didn’t have a fully representative sample as many people didn’t have time to answer our questionnaire.

Accessibility survey (for elderly)

We looked for evidence of provision to help the elderly to get around. For example, parking bays; lowered pavements and pedestrian crossings; bus stops and where the buses went.

This was easy to do but it was more difficult to determine how helpful this provision was for the elderly. Many of these services may be used by all visitors to the area and parking bays may be full before the elderly are able to park in them etc.

Photographs

We took photographs as evidence of shops and services that were aimed at different ethnic or religious communities and at the elderly. We could use them in our data presentation.

These provided useful reminders of the shops we saw but they didn’t add as much as the land use survey in terms of discovering what services there were. We could use them on a GIS to illustrate our findings but on their own, they are limited because they reflect our perceptions of what was worth taking photos of and not necessarily the true nature of the area, so they are quite subjective.

Data Presentation

  • We redrew the land use survey to make it neater and colour coded the shops and services with a key that identified key services for different ethnicities
    • On another copy we marked on provision that might help the elderly community
    • In both cases we added the photos we had taken as GIS
  • We made graphs to show the results of the different questions of the quantitative questionnaire
    • Some we made as bar charts such as the ages of the population we had surveyed and how often they visited the area because this allowed us to quickly see the spread of results
    • We made pie charts of the ethnicities, which also allowed us to see the proportions easily
    • We made scatter graphs to compare ethnicity and how often positive they were about the services so that we could see whether some ethnic groups were happier than others and we did the same by age group to see whether there was any correlation
  • We put positive comments on one side of a table and negative on the other for the qualitative questionnaire
    • We looked at the comments to see how strongly the people felt and to see whether their comments matched what we had seen on the day
    • We also put the words into an online programme that makes them appear proportional in size to how often they were said
      • This helped us to identify common themes
  • As well as adding them to the GIS, we chose photos that we felt were useful for illustrating our investigation and annotated them with information that was helpful to answer the question

Our Results

  • There was very little provision for different ethnic groups
    • There was one Tandoori restaurant, one Japanese and another Pan Asian restaurant but no Kosher butcher despite 19% being Jewish and no Halal shops to cater for the 12% of Muslims
    • There was a synagogue and church but no other shops or services that did not reflect mainstream UK culture (e.g. there were shops such as Boots, Pizza Express, etc as well as nail bars/beauty salons, some boutiques and some charity shops)
    • Our questionnaire showed that most of the ethnicities and religious groups were satisfied with the provision (80% said it was good or very good)
    • Some seemed to be integrated into UK culture
    • Others said that Mill Hill served their day to day needs and that they travelled to Edgware or Hendon for their more specialist shopping
  • Accessibility by car was not good at Mill Hill according to the questionnaires
  • Many of the elderly complained that parking was expensive
  • Parking in the M&S carpark used to be free for the first 2 hours but now they charge £3 unless you spend £15. “As a widow living alone, it is difficult for me to spend that much and M&S is quite an expensive shop”
  • Other parking is much further away and parking bays on the main road are not always available (65% said that parking was unsatisfactory)
  • Accessibility by bus was good and the bus stops are sheltered but the seating is not that comfortable for an elderly person
  • There are several benches positioned along the high street and this was helpful to allow old people to take a rest
  • There are also 3 pedestrian crossings with lowered pavements helping people who are wheelchair bound
  • There is also a shop “Independent Living Company” that sells wheelchairs and mobility scooters
  • There are several activities running in the Mill Hill area
    • There is a club for Jewish elderly in Mill Hill synagogue; a coffee morning in Mill Hill Library; Bingo and coffee mornings in the church; etc as well as groups for Alzheimer sufferers and carers (The Mill Hill Dementia Café)

Conclusions

  • There is little provision aimed specifically at different religions and ethnic groups
    • Mill Hill is more mainstream in the nature of the shops and services
    • However most of the ethnic groups we spoke to were satisfied with the local area
    • It may be that they are well integrated into the mainstream UK culture or that they don’t mind travelling to buy specialist items
  • The elderly people we asked were happy with most aspects of the shopping centre but did complain about inadequate affordable parking and the fact there wasn’t a cheap supermarket in Mill Hill
    • There were a lot of social activities and services aimed specifically at the elderly
  • Overall, Mill Hill does seem to cater well for the elderly, but it has not really adapted to reflect the diverse ethnic and religious groups in the area

Evaluation of our Investigation

  • Most of the results we took were reasonably accurate as we were working in teams and double checking our results
  • The investigation was well planned and the tests we did went according to plan
  • We followed our health and safety rules, and everyone remained safe
  • Considering our time restrictions and limited budget, the investigation was successful and provided a good sample size for studying and quantitative data to produce graphs and analyse
  • Our land use survey was extremely accurate
  • Our pedestrian survey was not accurate or reliable and we didn’t use the data we collected from this in the end for these reasons
  • However, there were ways we could have made our results more accurate
    • We could have interviewed stakeholders such as the local council to find out more information about the provision for both groups
  • There were also problems related to reliability
    • We only went for one day and during working hours
    • We could have got a wider range of views by going on several days and at different times of the day