Method 2: Answering Science Questions by Conducting a
Survey.
Older students might choose to use a survey method to test a science
question that has social, environmental or economic aspects to it. For
example, they might want to survey classmates and/or community members
about their water use, energy use, preparedness for natural hazards or
products used to enrich the soil in their gardens.
Survey projects may appear to be easy options, but it takes a great deal
of thought and skill to design a survey and select a sample of participants
that will provide useful and valid data.
Students doing survey projects need to ask themselves:
- What do I really want to find out from my survey? (For example, what
percent of people in my class use oil to heat their homes with oil and
what percent with electric heat? How does this compare with the national
average?)
- Who should be in my sample of people to take the survey? Why those
people? (Students could use their classmates and their parents or guardians,
or a wider sample. The sample should be as representative as possible
of the community.)
- How will I protect their privacy? (Students should let survey participants
know that no names will be reported out in the study. All data will
be anonymous.)
- How long should my survey be? (Students will find that they get greater
participation with shorter surveys than with longer ones.)
- Should the questions be open-ended (fill in the blank) or should
I give people answers to choose from (closed-ended)? (Closed-ended responses
are easier and quicker to score. Open-ended questions take longer to
score and the data are more difficult to pull together. However, open-ended
questions also provide more information.)
- How will I distribute my survey? How will I get it back? (Students
can distribute their surveys and have a box or envelope to collect them.
They can also ask the participants the questions themselves and write
in the responses.)
- How will I organize and analyze the data I get from my survey? (Students
can organize data in tables or charts. They can analyze by adding up
the numbers of responses for each item and dividing the number of each
response by the total number of responses for that item. For example,
if the student asked 20 classmates how they heated their homes and 5
said with oil and the other 15 with electric heat, the student would
report 25% heated with oil and 75% heated with electricity.)
- How will I report out what I find from the data? (Students can report
out in a number of ways, but large graphs or histograms are easy to
see and understand.)
|
