Questionnaire

Questionnaire

What age are you?

Under 16 17-21 21-30 30-50 +50

What town do you currently live in? ________________________________________

What is your gender?

Male Female

1. Do you think its important to archive and learn our history?

Yes No

2. When you think of WW1 which of the following words do you think of?

Death, Power, Ignorance or Morality

3. How much do you think you know about WW1?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(Nothing) (History PHD)

4. How much of an impact do you feel the war had on your life?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(No Effect) (Huge Effect)

5. In a documentary about WW1 what would you want to learn about?

Soldiers Trenches Home Front Political Figures

6. Do you know anything about your ancestors in the war?

Yes No

7. Did you Know that shoreham was home to a large army camp during the war/

Yes No

+

8. What do you think the maximum capacity of the camp was?

3000 30,000 50,000 +100,000

9. In a documentary about Shoreham Army Camp what would you want to learn about?

The Story Of The Camp The Story Of The Individuals

10. Would you be interested in watching a documentary about Shoreham Army Camp?

Yes No

Focus Group Results

Regularly Occurring Themes In The Focus Group Results

1) The majority of people believe that history is important.

People believe that we can learn from the mistakes of our past.

The minority that believe history is not important justified it by saying that culture and society is forever in a state of change and that the pasts lessons are not relevant to current events.

2) The regular 1 word reactions to the phrase “World War 1” were (Death, Power, Ignorance and Morality)

Majoritively people have negative connotations towards the war.

3) The majority of people felt that they know some knowledge about the war.

Most people know about the trenches, and the countries involved, However very few people know about the home front or the cause for the war.

4) The majority of people felt that the war did have an effect on their lives.

They thought that the immediate effects of the war (economic collapse) had long lasting effects on the current day.

5) The majority of people expect to learn about the lives of the soldiers and the trenches.

Nobody mentioned the home front or the political figures.

6 & 7) Everybody said they saw soldiers playing football, some knew that it was the Christmas truce.

On the second image people saw a soldier mourning the death of a friend.

On the third image most people knew it was a military poster encouraging people to sign up, few people knew it was Kitchener.

On the fourth image everybody saw that it was a quote by an old ww1 veteran.

8 & 9) On the first image the majority people felt uplifted and that bitter rivalry between politicians could not separate the men from enjoying their holiday.

On the second image people were shocked by the juxtaposition against the first image, the felt disheartened and realised that people did suffer great loss in this war.

The third image separated people equally, some people liked the poster and thought it was a good idea to promote peoples need to join the army, were as other people felt that they were tempting young men to their deaths on demand of politicians.

The final image persuaded the majority to believe the opinion represented in the quote.

10) A small minority knew about their ancestors, however they knew very little (names and jobs for example)

11) The majority of people in my focus groups were locals and nobody was aware that there was an army camp at Shoreham in the great war.

12) The majority of people were shocked to learn about the camp and they were eager to learn more.

13) The majority of people would expect to learn about the everyday life of the soldiers or the training they experienced. Some other people expected to learn individual stories and what they did after they left the camp.

14) Most people didn’t think they had any organised form of entertainment and just played card games and similar activities, a small minority believed that there were formalised events such as sports games.

15) There were three questions which more than one person would ask.

Why did you join the army?

What did you do at the camp?

Were you aware of what you were getting yourself into?

Primary Research Trip

For primary research into our study of The Shoreham Army Camp we went to the site and searched for artefacts from the period. Helping us with our excavation was Brian Drury, Jason Russell, Luke and Hamish Macgillivary, who is the curator of Worthing college. They taught us how to perform an excavation efficiently and productively. Put simply we were in a large field called happy valley which is believed to be one of the locations for barracks. Firstly we separated the field into squares on a grid, this helps to make sure that the same place isn't searched twice saving time, also when an artefact is found we can pinpoint its exact location to help us understand more about the camp and infer certain speculations, for example we found a stirrup in only one square, this would hint that there were stables in this area. One of our advisor's Brian had a GPS tracker which aloud him to pin point the exact location of an artefacts discovery extremely accurately. The first item we found was the top of a modern drinks can, this demoralized some of us, however Luke taught us to stay positive. By the end of the day we had found a wide variety of artefacts, a few nails, some military uniform buttons, a stirrup, some larger construction nails, and a latch used on windows.

Focus Group Preparation

WW1 Focus Group                    

Date……………….               Numbers Present……

1. Do you think History is important? Justify your answer.
2. Discuss what you think about when you hear the phrase “World War 1”.
3. Discuss what you know about WW1
4. Do you think the first world war has had any effect on your life.
5. When you watch a program or read a book about WW1 what do you expect to find?
6. Analyse the following images for a few minutes. (Answer the next three questions 1 image at a time.)
7. Describe what you see.
8. How does this image make you feel?
9. What do you think the purpose of this image was?
10. Do any of you know of your ancestors lives in WW1, if so share what you know.
11. Shoreham was home to thousands of soldiers from all over the world during the war, a focal point for the commonwealth army with a railhead, seaport and airport in a strategic position on the south coast becoming the location for forming the 24th Division. Did you even know it existed?
12. How does it feel to know that such an important part of history is on your doorstep?
13. This focus group was put together because i'm making a documentary about shoreham army camp. What would you expect to see from this kind of documentary?
14. What do you think the soldiers did for entertainment?
15. If you could a soldier at the camp one question what would it be?

Question 6 References