Vietnamese Mass & some thoughts

I went to a Vietnamese Mass today at Resurrection of Our Lord Church to hand out my surveys. I got 10 surveys back, which isn't very much compared to how many people were there, but I'm happy to get as many as I can. Father Dominic had me come there 15 minutes before the Mass ended, and he had a table out for me near the exit to make sure people would see me. But, it's hard to get people to participate when most want to go home and/or don't have time. I did have a couple of people seek me out, which was nice, but also adds a sampling bias.

I'm trying to concentrate more on getting surveys from the middle-aged to younger age group. Working with Catholic Charities, I've gotten a lot of participation from the elderly population, but I expect each age group to have different needs when it comes to healthcare. Even though some of the elders have been in the U.S. for at least 20-30 years, they still don't know very much English. On the other hand, with the middle-aged group, for those who have been here for 20-30 years, they know English very well, since they most likely came here when they were young and went to school here. So barriers such as not understanding the doctor, or not having a physician speak Vietnamese, may not apply to them.

Another kind of issue I'm running into, is that for couples, usually the husband will do one survey for the both of them, even though I gave each person a survey. I'm not sure if this has to do with Vietnamese traditional roles, or they don't see the necessity in getting as many responses as possible. I've also noticed that the men are more willing to do the survey, and also have less trouble completing it. There's just a lot more things that I want to get done with this project, but I don't think the summer is enough time to get everything that I want to done. I see this continuing over the year, but hopefully I'll get a better idea once I start doing data analysis.