Investigative Report – Tips for Designing and Conducting a Survey
10th Grade English
The following are tips you need to think about when designing and conducting a survey:
- Understand your intended audience of your survey:
● Know who you want to take the survey and why JUST them! (“10th Graders” or “Math Teachers” or “Mothers”)
●Realize surveys are meant for groups of people and interviews are meant for individuals. If you want to survey you mom…it is really an interview; but if you want to survey your classmates’ mothers, including your own, you can conduct a survey
- Clearly state your intentions with the research.
●Many people are hesitant to answer questions about themselves and their opinions. If you are developing your survey for a science fair project, people will probably be more willing to help if you clearly state your intentions. At the top of your survey, write a brief statement explaining why you are collecting the information and reassure each respondent that the information is entirely anonymous.
- Include instructions with your survey questionnaire
●What may seem obvious to you probably is not very obvious to someone else. To ensure that you collect valid survey results, make sure you include instructions on how to answer the survey questionnaire. There should probably be a short introductory set of instructions at the top of the survey questionnaire, and additional instructions for specific questions as needed.
●Your overall instructions may be something like:
o“Please mark the appropriate box next to your answer choice with an "x" ( X ). Please answer all of the questions to the best of your ability.”
- Do not ask for personal information unless you need it.
●Let the people know that you may use their answers in your investigative report. Please ask them how to spell their name and what they prefer to be called (“Bill” instead of “William”)
●If they do not want to be quoted, ask them to complete the survey without a name attached…don’t just discount their opinion because they don’t want their name to be used.
- Keep the questions short and concise
oThe wording for survey questions should be short and concise.
oDo not ask too many questions – 5-10 is more than enough!
oMultiple choice questions are easier to give, take and gather data
▪“1=strongly agree, 2= sort of agree, 3=neutral, 4= sort of disagree, 5=strongly disagree”
oGive the person an opportunity to explain the answer chosen in order to give you some “words” to use in your essay.
oThe best way to ensure your questions are well worded is to test them by having other people review and test your survey before you distribute it to the full sample.
- Make sure the questions are unbiased
●When developing your survey questionnaire, you want to make certain that you are asking the questions in a neutral way, i.e., that you are not leading them toward a particular answer.
●Know your bias…but try to gather honest responses verses attempting to lead the person in a certain direction.
- Order/group questions according to subject
●If you have more than six questions in your questionnaire, then you should make an effort to organize your questions so the respondents can answer them as quickly as possible. A good way to organize the questions is to group them together by subject. This way your respondents can focus their thoughts and answer a series of questions.
- Present the questions in a clean and organized layout:
●A clean layout will make it much simpler for people to respond to the questions and for you to collect the data. Make sure that your method for marking answers is well explained and that your answer boxes are consistent throughout the questionnaire.
●Think of creating a survey on an internet source, like SurveyMonkey or on a GoogleForm (ask the librarian for help setting that up)
●You can ask me to link that survey to my website if you want to gather that information in a centralized place
●If you hand out a survey, make sure you type it, everything is spelt correctly and you gather them back immediately
- Test the survey questionnaire
●Once you have developed your survey questionnaire, you should conduct a small test (5 -10 people) to make sure that respondents clearly understand the questions you are asking and that you are capturing the information that you need for your study.
- The number of people you need to ask to make it a valid survey:
●The general figure you are shooting for is 10% of the group you are looking at (of 400 10th graders you need to ask 40)
●The more you ask, the more valid the answers will be
●If you want a class to take a survey, ask the teacher prior to the giving it out (at least a day or two) and give an approximate time the survey will take.
●Do not give the survey without the teacher knowing it or without his/her permission…be smart and respectful in the survey giving.
Give yourself a date you need to have the survey completed because you will need to gather that information, infer what the information tells you and search for elements in the survey which may be most telling in supporting your investigative report. I would say at least a week – this gives you enough time to gather, calculate and implement the data from the survey before you need to start using it in your investigation. Plus, what happens when you expect the survey to come out one why but in the end it does not support your “bias” in your report…you still need 2 primary sources!
Information based off of