My sampling strategy was overall pretty easy to implement. The main difficulty that I ran in to was trying to be at the park every day during the same time period. There were a few days that were missed due to traffic conditions on the drive home when I was transferred to a different location for work. There were also a few days were I was at the World Sleep Symposium where my husband went to the park on my behalf but there were some inconsistencies with his measurements compared to mine that I suspect are user error differences.
One difficulty that I’m foreseeing if I continue to collect data is the upcoming time change as well as sunset rapidly descending upon my collection time. Currently I’m measuring from 17:30-17:45 every day. Sunset is currently at 18:08 and gets a few minutes earlier each day. I anticipate that the darkness will drastically change my collection numbers and I’m unsure if I should continue a 24 hr cycle of measurement after the time change and measure at 16:30-16:45 or if I should stay with the accepted clock time. These may not come up as I anticipate that I will stop collecting data before the time change, as far as it pertains to this report, though I may continue on my own accord out of sheer curiosity.
