Writing Survey Questions What are you curious about? Now is your chance to find it out! Generating Data to Analyze During the Semester

Find the issue and fix it….. The government should force you to pay higher taxes. Yes No Indifferent

Avoid Leading Words or Questions Words like Should, Force, Prohibit, Outstanding, Legendary, ect… can bias a question’s responses. Be careful in your wording to not bias responses.

Find the issue and fix it….. What is your age? 0-10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60

Give Mutually Exclusive Choices and Give Options that Cover All Possible Choices Have answer choices that do not overlap with each other and do not leave out answer choices leaving a respondent with no choice to answer.

Find the issue and fix it….. What do you like to do for fun?

Ask Direct Questions and Consider How You Will Use the Responses (What Stats Will You Do?) Consider what you want to find out about the topic and consider listing 5 or so most common answers you expect to receive. You could ask the respondent to chose the option that most describes him/her. Or, you could ask the respondent to rank the choices from best to worst.

Find the issue and fix it….. What are your religious beliefs? Who did you vote for in the last election?

Add a “Prefer Not to Answer” Option on Sensitive Issues and Intrusive Questions Prefer Not to Answer options could increase data quality or response rates, as many respondents appreciate such a non- disclosure option. Furthermore, different cultural groups may respond differently. Studies have shown that that while U.S. respondents skip sensitive questions, Asian respondents often discontinue the survey entirely.

Find the issue and fix it….. What is your opinion of WTCC Advising Center? Pretty good Great Fantastic Incredible The Best Ever

Use a Balanced Scale When wanting to ask about public satisfaction on any item, the rating scale should include choices that are equal conceptual distance from one point to the next and equal number of choices on each side of “indifferent”.

Find the issue and fix it….. How likely are you to go out for dinner and a movie this weekend?

Ask Only One Question At A Time There is often a temptation to ask multiple questions within one question. This can cause problems for respondents not knowing how to answer if they fit one situation and not the other.

Your Turn To Write a Survey Question: Choose a topic of interest to you pertaining to WTCC Students? What would you like to know about students that attend WTCC? What are you curious about? Write a survey question that will generate qualitative responses. Write a second survey question that will generate quantitative responses.

Survey Monkey Develop Questionnaire Email link to students through BB Results downloaded into Excel or accessible in format to the right

Spreadsheet of Responses Rate your experience with Wake Tech's Student Advising Department. (Resources and staff) What is the most important reason you are attending WTCC? Were you raised primarily by a single parent (single parent household)? How many hours, on average, do you work a job each week? How many credit hours are you taking this semester? Response Other (please specify) Open-Ended Response Satisfied Financial No 20 12 No Opinion 13 To transfer to a 4 year school 35 Financial and transfer 14 Unsatisfied 17 Very Satisfied 15 11

Descriptive Stats With Data Quantitative Data Create frequencies within classes (Data Analysis Toolpack) Create histograms Compute mean, median, mode, and standard deviation Qualitative Data Create relative frequencies (Pivot Table) Create Pie charts Create Bar charts

Probability of Outcomes If you were raised by a single parent, what is the probability that the main reason you attended WTCC is financial? What is the probability of a student taking 12 credit hours or more and working 30 hours or more?

Creating a Confidence Interval Quantitative Data CI for the population mean μ Example: Create a 95% CI for the mean number of credit hours that WTCC students are currently taking. Qualitative Data CI for the population proportion p Example: Create a 95% CI for the percent of WTCC students that were raised by a single parent.

Conducting a Hypothesis Test Quantitative Data HT for a claim on the population mean μ Example: The average number of hours that WTCC students work per week is greater than 10 hours. Qualitative Data HT for a claim on the population proportion p Example: A majority of WTCC students are satisfied with Wake Tech's Student Advising Department.

Resources and Summary Using Pivot Tables in Excel Survey Monkey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peNTp5fuKFg  Survey Monkey https://www.surveymonkey.com/ Pitfalls of Survey Questions https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/writing-survey-questions/