The research question being studied is: does participation in Family Fun Time Activities affect family involvement? We are studying this question through survey research. When creating surveys, there are several practices that will promote the best survey question to promote the best data responses. One practice is ensuring that any survey items or questions are short and clear of what they are asking. Survey items need to be written in a way that respondents are component to answer. Respondents must be willing to answer any survey items in survey research. Additionally, questions should only ask one question at a time. Some in-depth questions can be answered in two parts, and theses should be separated. Negative terms, such as no or not, should not be used. These create confusing questions that may make it harder to get response that are answering what is being asked. Finally, bias should be avoided in all questions, items, and answers.
Our dependent variable in this study is the amount of family involvement. To operationalize this dependent variable, we will use the survey question: did this activity encourage your family to work together to complete? This will be answered on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being not at all and 10 being a great amount. The literature on this topic reviewed several factors that could be considered independent variables. One of these possible independent variables is marital status. The survey question we will use to operationalize this independent variable is: what is your marital status? The answer choices for this question are married, divorced, widowed, or single. These questions are both short, relevant to the research we are conducting, and are easily understood. These questions do not pose any potential complications, based on our class discussions.