Survey Project

What is it? This semester we’ve been talking about different issues in education. Now you are going to pick an issue related to Jennings Education and pursue it. You are going to start with a survey And end up with an infographic.

What is an Infographic?

But First… Your survey will be administered to students and/or teachers at Jennings High School about a topic relating to school or education. Your survey will have 10-15 multiple choice questions about the issue or topic You will eventually be responsible for analyzing and presenting the data in a visual way (so we can hang them up!)

Possible Topics Homework: Effective or Not? Homework: Why we do or don’t do it School Uniforms: Do they make school better? School Fights: Fun or Frustrating? Jennings School Pride: Do we have it? Favorite Classes Jennings Dreams: What do we want to be? Reading: How often do we do it? (other topics could be related to sports, grades, parent support, after school activities, school safety, attendance, etc)

How to Make a Valid and Unbiased Survey

First Step Brainstorm… What is the topic of your survey What is the objective, or what information are you trying to obtain Make sure your questions specifically address the objectives you are trying to learn, for ex: If you are trying to make a survey on homework completion with high school students, you might ask “On a scale from 1-5, how often do you complete you homework” or “Which classes are you most likely to complete your homework?

Who is the audience? If you are going to ask a small group you can ask everybody (called a Census) If you want to survey a large group, you may not be able to ask everybody so you should ask a sample of the population (this is called Sampling) – We will be doing this

Types of Questions A survey question can be: Open-ended (the person can answer in any way they want), or Closed-ended (the person chooses from one of several options) Closed ended questions are much easier to total up later on, but may stop people giving an answer they really want. Example: "What is your favorite color?" Open-ended: Someone may answer "dark fuchsia", in which case you will need to have a category "dark fuchsia" in your results. Closed-ended: With a choice of only 12 colors your work will be easier, but they may not be able to pick their exact favorite color.

STOP HERE!

Question Sequence It is generally best to try to have your questions go: from the least sensitive to the most sensitive from the more general to the more specific from questions about facts to questions about opinions

What does bias have to do with it? If you are Sampling you should be careful who you ask, for ex: If you only ask people who look friendly, you will only know what friendly people think! If you went to the swimming pool and asked people "Can you swim?" you will get a biased answer ... maybe even 100% will say "Yes" The surveys where people are asked to ring a number to vote are not very accurate, because only certain types of people actually ring up! We’ll talk more about this later.

Make your questions Neutral Your questions should also be neutral ... allowing the person to think their own thoughts about the question. If I had the question "Do you love nature?" ... that is a bad question because it is almost forcing the person to say "Yes, of course." Try rewording it to be more neutral, for example: Example: "How important is the natural environment to you?" Not Important Some Importance Very Important

Types of Questions 1. Scale 2. Multiple Choice 3. Open Ended How often do you complete your homework? 1- Always 2- Often 3- Sometimes 4- Rarely 5- Never 2. Multiple Choice Which of the following best describes your schoolwork? Sloppy Organized Inconsistent Neat 3. Open Ended What word would you use to describe your schoolwork?

Demographic questions!

Tally up the data or the results…. Tally the Results Now you have finished asking questions it is time to tally the results. By "tally" I mean add up. This usually involves lots of paperwork and computer work (spreadsheets are useful!) Example: For "favorite colors of my class" you can simply write tally marks like this (every fifth mark crosses the previous 4 marks, so you can easily see groups of 5):

The Results…. Look at your survey results for trends and patterns. What conclusions can you draw from the survey results? Write a conclusion, and include any tables or graphs that help you present your survey results

Ways to present your results Tables Sometimes, you can simply report the information in a table.  A table is a very simple way to show others the results.  A table should have a title, so those looking at it understand what it shows: Statistics You can also summarize the results using statistics, such as mean or standard deviation Example: you have lots of information about how long it takes people to get to school but it may be simpler just to present a summary such as: Shortest Journey: 3 minutes Average Journey: 22 minutes Longest Journey: 58 minutes

Graphs Nothing makes a report look better than a nice graph or chart There are many different types of graphs.  Three of the most common are: Line Graph  - Used to show information that is somehow connected (such as change over time) Pie Chart - Used most often to show survey data that is to be reported in percentages.  

People's Comments If people have given their opinions or comments in the survey, you can present the more interesting ones: Example: In response to the question "How can we best clean up the river?" we received these interesting replies: "The government has a special fund for this" "The local gardening group has seedlings you could plant"

Resources http://www.microsoft.com/education/DesignSurvey.aspx?pf=true http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/survey-conducting.html