The year 2023 started with a better understanding of the research project I am currently involved in as a post-doc at Auburn University. I am involved in a research project that aims at colocating agricultural crops with a solar energy generation system–also called as agrivoltaic system–to meet dual purpose of food and energy production and reduce carbon emission from fossil fuels and coals. Even though I was supposed to design an economic optimization model, delay on the data acquisition shifted my focus towards solar developers survey design. I started designing survey from February. The initial plan was to develop choice model based survey to study willingness and intentions of soar developers to adopt agrivoltaic system. The survey designing process took until August–about seven months. Two major factors contributed to this lengthy process. First, there were more unknowns than knowns about agrivoltaic system because it is a new emerging topics globally. It was also a new topics for me as I was not familiar with solar energy research. Second, several round of discussions with multidisciplinary team to decide focus of the survey took some time.
The draft survey was finalized after several rounds of discussion with experts from multiple disciplines such as economists, energy experts, solar developers, and other social scientists in the research team. After preparing the draft survey we tested it with solar developers in the focus group discussion. The survey was not well received by solar developers which forced us to revamp our approach. We planned to use more simplified approach–contingent valuation method. After two and half months of designing contingent valuation survey we were ready to discuss our survey with solar developers. However, we were still skeptical whether this approach will be received favorably by solar developers because we were unable to eliminate all reservations they previously had in our current version. So, we internally decided to change the survey to more simplified approach such as rating scale. The newer version of survey will be completed in about a month and we will be able to test new survey among solar developers in a focus group discussion. I hope that our survey will be taken more favorably by developers, else we need to think about new approach or abandon the survey. It will be a year of planning and designing survey or longer if things go favorably in the next round of focus group discussion.
The year 2023 was a great year of learning from experiences. Even though I have designed a few survey on the past, this experience was unique because I learned about the minute details that must be considered to design a quality survey. I got a different perspective on survey design. For example, how each and every question will be used, context, speaking language of respondents, excluding unnecessary information, including necessary information, length of survey vs information to collect, focus of survey guided by research question and hypothesis, ambiguity in questions, perception difference between survey designer and respondents about questions, simplicity of question, simplicity of response, cognitive and computation burden to responders, and many more. I realized that survey designing is not an easy task as it seems. Collecting survey data is also a daunting task because respondents may not be willing to respond because of privacy, ambiguity, complexity, perceptions, and several other factors. The first version of the survey with choice model was a perfect example of how very well designed survey in the eyes of survey designers can still be rejected by responders. Even the simplest rating scale requires several thoughts and planning to meet the research objectives, make less ambiguous for responders to answer, gain their trust, and make them believe that their information will remain absolutely confidential. All these learning are valuable lessons.
From the output stand point, 2023 was a slow year yet, I still managed to produce some outputs. Four of my research papers from my Ph.D. were published in 2023. A few papers are in the development phase. I applied USDA/NIFA research grant to study ecosystem sustainability of speciality crop agrivoltaic system. I am mentoring and collaborating with MS and Ph.D. students in the Agricultural Economics department at Auburn University. I went Colorado to participate in project retreat where I networked with faculties across multiple universities and learned about ongoing agrivoltaic project throughout the US. I got chance to see agrivoltaic system operating in Jack’s Solar Garden, Colorado. My wife passed her NCLEX exam and on the active job market. These are some of the new achievements and progress made in 2023.
Overall, 2023 remains a learning and productive year for me. I plan to make 2024 a more productive year and possibly a year of a new journey. Happy New Year 2024. I hope your coming days will be great as I hope mine too.
