The best practices for survey research includes well formatted questions meaning questions that avoid biases, aren’t asking two questions in one, and have clear wording. Questions should be formatted so that participants are willing and able to answer. Negative wording should be avoided as well as long drawn out questions.
Our research question that this survey was created to address is, “What needs do parents/guardians have that if met would help increase parent involvement in education?” To answer this question, my dependent variable is parent involvement. I’m operationalizing parent involvement with the survey question, “How involved do you feel in your child’s education on a scale of 0 – 10?” My independent variable is based on the question, “How many children are in your household?” This question has a blank space for parents to enter a number.
Both of these questions are examples of well written survey questions. Participants won’t be confused when answering and there are clear answers. These questions are the best options to be my independent and dependent variables because of their relevance to my literature review topic. I researched how the amount of children in a household affects a parent’s involvement. The amount of children in a household directly and negatively affects how involved a parent is able to be.