Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Mapping a Local Budget Plan
For the eye-tracking study, part of the georeferenced data was used to create
different map types (choropleth maps, graduated symbol maps, pie and line chart
maps) and variations of legend content (numerical and textual). Table
1
shows the
different types of combination of map types and legend content used in this study.
All color schemes used in the study for choropleth maps or pie chart maps have
been selected with the Colorbrewer (
2013
). The maps used in the eye-tracking
study can be seen in Fig.
1
.
Methods
Within this study, two experimental parts were combined: an online survey and an
eye-tracking study. For the online survey, people have been recruited by three ways:
local politicians have been contacted by email. All members of the actual city council
and the leaders of each city district were included. Second, employees of the local
administration who are dealing with financial data have been invited by email. The
number of employees working with the local budget is limited, and they can be
isolated by checking the organisation chart of the local administration. The third
group were the citizens: in Trier, there is a participatory budget process and most of
the citizens taking part in this process are registered for a mailing list. This mailing
list has been used to sent the invitations to the online survey to the citizens. Within the
online survey, the respondents created a personal code (they were asked to create a
combination of first letters of their name, their birth place, and so on) which allows to
link the online survey
s results with the results of the eye-tracking study which was
conducted six month later. For showing their interest in the eye-tracking study,
people could leave their email-address at the end of the online survey.
'
Table 1 Variations of map types and legend types used in the eye-tracking study
Color
scheme
Map type 1
Map type 2
Legend
Reference value
Map
1
Pie chart map
Mosaic map
Numerical None
None
Map
2
Graduated symbol
map
None
Numerical None
None
Map
3
Choropleth map
None
Numerical Unipolar
Inhabitants
Map
4
Choropleth map
None
Textual
Bipolar
Inhabitants
Map
5
Choropleth map
None
Numerical Unipolar
Children 6-16
years
Map
6
Line chart map
Graduated symbol
map
Numerical Unipolar
Street meters
