Caroline Ravizzoni Girotto
Nova Southeastern University
COMP 2000
Dr. Juliette C. Kitchens
November 18, 2023
Mapping revision
Preparing for the Introduction section:
I needed to modify my research question slightly, but I did not alter its main premise, that
tourists pick up seashells without knowing what the consequences may be. The purpose of my
research was to know if tourists are still picking up seashells, if they know the negative impacts,
and how to improve awareness of this. The focus was tourists in the Broward County area.
Preparing for the Method section
In my process of preparing and implementing the survey methods, one of the main changes
involved how I would reach out to people to take the survey. I wanted to keep simple so I
decided to do in person survey at the beach. Another change was when I realized that most
tourists do not speak spanish, so I would have to provide different languages for the survey. I
changed also the time of the day I did my research on the selected beaches. I wanted to do it at
all places morning and afternoon but in one place I could not do it, so I did it just in the
afternoon, but I was still able to collect plenty of answers. Another thing that changed was the
number of questions, I wanted 6 questions, one about the age for my demographic section,
however, I decided to take that question off the survey.
Preparing for the Results Section
For the first category, Seashell Collection Behavior the results I found showed that 63.8 % of
people pick up seashells when visiting the beach, which I was expecting since picking up
seashells is a common practice when visiting the beach. The second category, previously
environmental awareness and impact, showed that most people are not aware of the negative
impacts and guidelines for picking up seashells. The results showed that 41.6% of people are not
sure and another 41.6% do not think that picking up seashells has a negative impact on the
beach’s ecosystem and that the majority of people. Also, 72.2% were never been informed about
local regulations or guidelines regarding seashell collection. This was very significant as it shows
that most people were not aware of the negative impacts of seashell collection. My third
category, conservation and improving regulations, showed that most people support the
implementation of guidelines for seashell collection to protect the beach ecosystem, and most
agree that a sign at the beach entrance is an effective way to improve the regulations and improve
awareness of the impacts.
Preparing for the Discussion section
I think that the review literature covered almost everything, and the data is simple to understand.
Maybe one thing that could be missing is regarding what type of display about warnings people
respond to best since I asked a question about whether a sign at the beach entrance with the
guidelines would help improve awareness.
Preparing for the conclusion
The point was to better understand the practice of tourists picking up seashells, and find ways
that Broward-county tourists and single-day beach visitors can efficiently become more aware of
all the negative impacts that picking up seashells can have on the local and global environment to
protect the marine environment and prevent further damage. I discovered that most tourists do
not know if there are negative impacts on picking seashells, that most people never were
informed of any regulation or guidelines by local authorities, and that most approve of the idea
of a sign at the beach entrance as a way to improve awareness.
For further research, maybe there could be some other ways to improve awareness, checking the
% of seashells taken from the beach, maybe a bigger scale research than mine, or even
researching local people instead of tourists.
Preparing for the bibliography
All my sources are cited, I have nothing to add or take off from the bibliography.
Preparing for the appendices
I will have appendices for the consent form, the survey questions, the recruitment material, data
charts, and analyses.
