Description: Surveying and Testing

Due: In lab, week of Oct 11

Guidlines:

• Use paper clips but not staples.
• Print and copy on one side of the page and use standard–weight letter–sized paper.
• Put your name in the header of each document so that it appears on each page, and number pages.
• Turn in your permission forms and survey sheets
  

Purpose: Conduct and carry out a survey of opinion, knowledge, or learning and employ statistics to analyze the results.

Background: In this inquiry, you should build upon your knowledge of statistics as you apply it to one of the most important and controversial areas of research, the investigation of people’s opinions and knowledge.

Teamwork: You may choose a partner for this assignment. Together with your partner, you should settle on some question that involves other peoples’ opinions or knowledge. Design a survey or assessment instrument that provides you information to answer your question. If you work in a team, it is highly recommended that your partner should be someone in the same laboratory section. Teams larger than 2 are discouraged, as it becomes easier for one or two in the team to do almost all the work

Factors: Although you have very broad freedom in what sorts of questions you address, you should include at least one potentially significant factor in your survey or test. For example, you might see whether men and women respond to something similarly or differently. You might look for variations based upon age, or on which instructor students have had.

Ethical Treatment of Human Subjects: Before beginning your survey, you will need to provide instructors with evidence that you have completed NIH training on ethical treatment of human subjects. You must conduct this survey in accord with the guidelines that govern research on human subjects in an academic setting. In particular, you must obtain signed consent from every participant, and you must conduct the survey in such a way that the responses of all participants are
anonymous, but any participant who chooses to withdraw from the study after it is completed can do so. Procedures and forms to assist in this process are on page ??.

Length: The report should be 2 – 4 typed pages.

Report Requirements: Although you may design your surveys or tests in teams, please type up individual reports. The interpretation and discussion of the data should be yours, although the data may be shared.
Please include the following sections

1. Title
2. Abstract. This paragraph should explain the purpose of your inquiry, and then summarize the main results. It should be written in present or past tense.
3. Introduction, including background information.
4. Survey. A copy of the survey or test you developed, with a discussion of why you settled on its final form.
5. Analysis. Statistical discussion of results, especially discussion of whether factors you investigated were statistically significant.
6. Conclusions.
7. Survey sheets. You must turn in the permission forms and response sheets from which you compiled your survey so that the instructors can verify that you properly followed procedures concerning ethical treatment of human subjects.

Schedule: Use the first lab period to construct your survey, and the second one to deliver it, or to analyze the results

Comments: Although your questions may seem as though they could never hurt anyone, and the procedures for protecting human subjects may seem like too much work, they are required, for example, in secondary science fair projects involving human subjects, so you may as well learn them now. As you enter your classroom and begin to explore teaching, you will want to experiment with innovative lessons and
instructional techniques. The development and implementation of these innovations should be carried out in a professional manner so that lessons learned from your classroom experiments can be presented at teaching conferences or
published in educational journals. Your school district as well as the journals in which you may wish to publish will require that you obtain appropriate permissions from students (and their parents) who participate in your classroom experiment. The lessons learned in this inquiry will provide you with the requisite knowledge and skills to carry out such classroom research projects.

Grading: This inquiry will be evaluated according to the Inquiry 3 grading checklist. Please note that you must acknowlege your team members, if any, and explain their contributions to the project. You must turn in your survey sheets to avoid penalties for the first item on the checklist.