CONNIE SIM SIEW YUNG (PGP110021) GHIVITHA d/o KALIMUTHU (PGP 110004)PRASHENA NAIR d/o PREBAKARRAN (PGP110011)

DESIGNING YOUR OWN DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH

WHAT ARE SURVEYS ?WRITING GOOD

SURVEYS

WHAT ARE SURVEYS ? Approach used to gather & describe :

(i) characteristics

(ii) attitudes

(iii) views

(iv) opinions Survey is a process that deals with :

(i) students

(ii) teachers

(iii) administrators

(iv) people who are important to a study

Surveys typically take the form of :(a) interviews(b) questionnaires

or (c) both

Basically, interviews & questionnaires are design using the qualitative method which consists of close-ended and open-ended questions.

Naturally, there are several differences between interviews and questionnaires.

CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERVIEWS

CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERVIEWS (cont)

Personal interviews

(a)AdvantagesCompletenessUse visual aids

(b)Disadvantages Interviewer biasExpenseTime consuming

QUESTIONNAIRES What is a questionnaire?

Formalized schedule for collecting data from respondentsOutlines information to be gathered

Key criteria of a good questionnaire Relevance to the problem at hand Accuracy in terms of its measures

QUESTIONNAIRES

Mail questionnaires Advantages

Low in cost Respondent convenience No interviewer bias Convenient

Disadvantages Lack of speed No interviewer Limited reach

SURVEY QUESTION Developing a focused and effective questionnaire will

help you to efficiently and accurately pinpoint the information that will help you make more informed decisions.

(A) “YES/ NO” QUESTION

Ex: Have you ever purchased a product or service

from our website?

Yes

No

(b)The Multiple Choice Questions

* consists of single or multiple answers

Ex: How did you first hear about our web site?

Television

Radio

Newspaper

Magazine

Word-of-mouth

Internet Other: Please Specify _______________

(c) Likert Scale

Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likert_scale

(d) Rank Order Scaling * ranked based upon a specific characteristic

Ex: Based upon what you have seen, heard, and experienced, please rank the following brands according to  their reliability. Place a "1" next to the brand that is most reliable, a "2" next to the brand that is next most reliable, and so on.  Remember, no two cars can have the same ranking .          Toyota        Mazda        Ford

(e) The Rating Scale

* used to measure the direction and intensity of attitudes.

Ex: Which of the following categories best describes your

last experience purchasing a product or service on our

website? Would you say that your experience was:

Adapted from: http://www.mineful.com/online_surveys/new_product_survey.html

EXAMPLES OF SURVEYS (Advertisement)

Evaluation)

Adapted from: http://www.mineful.com/online_surveys/advertisment_evaluation_survey.html

Graduate Student Survey

Adapted from: http://www.mineful.com/online_surveys/graduate_student.html

Job Evaluation Survey

Adapted from: http://www.mineful.com/online_surveys/job_evaluation_questionnaire.html

Online Questionnaire Examples

Adapted from: http://evensenwebs.com/prototypes.html

WRITING GOOD SURVEYS Clear written statement of a survey( basically ideas

on what you want to survey) It can be either in the form of an interview or

questionnaire Feedback from colleagues on the quality of the items

and to pilot the survey instrument with participants (similar to the ones you will eventually be surveying)

Approach an interview ( perceive ideas from your colleagues & participants to find out what was going on in their minds as they interacted with it).

NUM

THINGS TO AVOID IN WRITING GOOD SURVEY ITEMS

01

Overly long items

02

Unclear or ambiguous items

03

Negative items

04

Incomplete items

05

Overlapping choices in items

06

Items across two pages

07

Double-barreled items

08

Loaded word items

09

Absolute word items

10

Leading items

11

Prestige items

12

Embarrassing items

13

Biased items

14

Items at the wrong level of language

15

Items that respondents are incompetent to answer

16 Assuming that everyone has an answer to all items

17 Making respondents answer items that don’t apply

18 Irrelevant items

19 Writing superfluous information into items

VIDEO PRESENTATION

Adapted from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsZySkZ8bRo&feature=related

LINKS Steenstra, H.H. (2009). Interaction and the

standardized survey interview. Cambridge Online Journal.Retrieved 10 November 2011, from http://dx.doi.org/null

www.bus.iastate.edu

http://www.ehow.com/info_8163642_descriptive-methods-research-design.html

most often used in education for research and various kinds of curriculum development projects.

Can also be used for research not directly connected to curriculum.

a)To obtain informationb)To investigate topicsc)To ask opinions.

Survey

Language survey can be used to answer any research questions that requires exploration, description, or explanation of peoples’ characteristics, attitudes , view and opinions.

Will be focus on interpreting survey results which is presented in table.

will focus on descriptive statistics – interpreting the numerical tables of frequencies, percentages and descriptive statistics.

In this section

Refer to Table 5.6 in page 148. Immediately can tell that over

two-thirds of the respondents were females.

Americans and native speakers of English.

Average age was 44.2 years old. However, use table to present

about categories of people and only one dimension may not have been very efficient.

Example:Characteristics of Students in the Sample

Klauda.S.L and Guthrie.J.T (2008). Relationships of three components of reading fluency to reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(2), 310-321.

Characteristics Sample (%)

GenderMaleFemale

49.650.4

EthnicityAfrican AmericanAsianCaucasianHispanicOther

20.52.965.28.82.6

From the table, Immediately can tell that female respondents more than male respondents.

Students from Caucasian ethnic are more than other ethnic.

Yet, it can be more economic if presented in prose.

Table of numbers can be more useful when multiple categories of numerical information are presented along two or more dimensions.

Refer to table 5.7 on page 149. Such data display allows you to

readily compare the groups. Immediately can know that Higher

Education has the highest percentages of females (82.3%)

Research and Teacher Education have the lowest (62.5% and 62.9%).

Can quickly spot the fact that the Higher Education has the highest proportion of US citizen (98.4%) who are native speakers of English (96.8%).

Example

Reis, S.M, McCoach, D.B, Muller, L.M and Kaniskan,R.B. (2011). The effect of differentiated instructional and enrichnemt in five elementary school. American Educational Research Journal. 48(2). 462-501

Category SuburbanSouth %

UrbanSoutheast %

UrbanMagnet %

RuralSouth %

SuburbanMidwest %

White 45 1 59 65 55

Black 37 93 15 28 14

Hispanic 10 5 6 3 9

Asian 2 1 20 1 16

American Indian

1 0 0 0 0

Multiracial 5 — — 3 7

From the table, Immediately can know that the highest percentages of students who took part in the survey from Rural South is white students. (65%)

Black students from Urban Southeast have highest percentages taking part in the survey, (93%)

Only 1% percentages of American and Asian students from Urban Southeast school took part in the survey.

Table have advantage if want to present multiple categories of numerical information along two or more dimensions.

• Refer to Table 5.8• Table 5.8 shows several types of

information –i)Meansii)Standard deviationsiii)Frequencies• Bailey and Brown surveyed language –

testing teacher from around the world about amount of coverage they give some main topics that are typical of such course.

• Report responses of language-testing teacher from around the world.

Table 5.8 reports the language-testing teacher’s responses to Likert scale questions (0-5 with 0 being “none”)

“Item Writing” as a 3.24 which is higher compared to the other topics.

Standard deviation of 1.46 indicates that the responses to that item were a bit more varied than other topics.

Frequencies show exactly what percentage of the language testing teachers selected each possible options.

2.4% do not cover “Item Writing” 14.3% - some coverage 26.2%- extensive coverage Table is good way to present Likert

scale information as it provides a good estimate of mean and standard deviation.

Table also gives clear picture of actual percentages for each point along the Likert scale.

“Two kinds of knowledge that influence teachers’ understanding and practice of teaching. Subject matter and curricular issues Teachers’ implicit theories of teaching

(Richards, 1998: 51)

Beliefs are the best indicators of the decisions that people make throughout their lives.

(Dewey, 1933)

Teacher Beliefs About Learning

Learning can be alternatively conceptualized as:

1. a quantitative increase in knowledge

2. material committed to memory

3. the acquisition of material which can be retained and used in practice

4. the abstraction of meaning

5. a process aimed at understanding of reality

6. some form of personal change

(Gow & Kember, 1993)

Teacher Beliefs About LearnersLearners may be alternatively thought of metaphorically as:

1.resisters

2.receptacles

3.raw material

4.clients

5.partners

6.individual explorers

7.democratic explorers

(Meighan & Meighan, 1990)

Teacher Beliefs About Teaching

Good teachers are alternatively thought to have as key characteristics:patiencehigh IQwarmthcreativityability to be humourous

James D. Brown, & Theodore S. Rodgers,

Doing Second Language Research

Teacher Beliefs About Teaching

commitment to teaching good grades in college Ability to relate to different kinds of people Organizational skills Outgoingness

(Weinstein, 1989)

It appears that teaching is heavily influenced by the belief systems of its practitioners.

Belief systems come into play in “dealing with ill-structured and entangled domains”.

Teaching is such a domain influenced by: personalities of individual classes. national, community and school demands

on teaching time. teacher themselves.

James D. Brown, & Theodore S. Rodgers,

Doing Second Language Research

Belief systems often determine how language-learning tasks are chosen, modified, sequenced and contextualized by teachers and researches alike.

James D. Brown, & Theodore S. Rodgers,

Doing Second Language Research