The best practices for survey are as follows: The topics for research should be descriptive, exploratory, and explanatory. Questions should be clear, short, relevant, unbiased and not double barreled. Respondents should be competent and willing to answer. The general format for a questionnaire should be uncluttered, consistent, and there should only be one question per line.
My research question is “How does income impact a parent/guardian’s involvement”. To operationalize my dependent variable, which is parent involvement, I am going to use the survey question “How involved do you feel in your child’s education”. It is measured on a scale from zero to ten with zero being not at all and ten being extremely involved. To operationalize my independent variable, which is income, I am going to use the survey question “Does financial stress prevent you from being involved in your child’s education?”. It is measured with the attributes often, sometimes, or no.
For the question used for my dependent variable, it is good because it measures how involved a parent personally feels they are involved in their child’s education on a clear scale from zero to ten. Since my dependent variable is parent involvement, this question does a good job at addressing this. As for the question used for my independent variable, it is good because it addresses income. It asks how financial stress may impact a parent’s ability to be involved in their child’s education, which is good for my research question.