We were given the research question: “what needs do parents/guardians have that, if met, would help increase parent involvement in education?” This research question is designed to have a better understanding of the needs of the families that are using headstart for child care services. With this research question we are designing a survey to gather information to help get a better understanding of the needs of the families using headstart to give them more opertaties for parent involvement and to see how parent involvement changes their child’s education.
The best practice for survey research is to always keep the surveys anonymous and to keep the question related to the research question. With this research question we are asking questions regarding how involved the parent feels in their child’s life, what resources could help them be better involved, what their financial look like, and lastly their demographics.
A question to help the independent variable is “Is the household a single parent household?”. Whether or not the household is one to a single parent changes parent involvement in many different ways. Single parents may not have as much time to be with their child or they might be struggling with money more than a dual parent household.
A question that is focused on the dependent variable is “how often do you do the following ? Read books, have screen time, practice basic skills, talk with your child about their feelings, play outdoors, and arts and crafts.” This question shows how often they are doing these activities with their child and if they are even doing these activities at all. This gives an estimation of how involved the parent is in their child’s life at an early age. Also a single parent might not have the time to do these activities with their child, so it shows how parent involvement changes from single parent to dual parent household.
These questions are accurate to the research survey because it helps give us all the different information on parent involvement, their child’s education, and any programs that could help parents be more involved in their child’s life. The questions are written the way they are so there is no confusion on the information given and we can accurately record the data for our purpose in our research question.