Survey Design

When conducting survey research, it’s critical to create your survey in such a way that will produce the most accurate answers. Choose appropriate question forms for your research. If the research is studying different opinions or perspectives pertaining to a specific topic, open-ended questions would be the best type of question to use. However, our research requires clear, concise answers, meaning we will be using close-ended questions where surveyors will select an answer from a list provided by the researcher. Survey questions must be clear, avoid using double-barreled questions that ask two questions in one. Also avoid biased items and terms that would sway your data or irrelevant questions that would not produce valuable data to your research. Researchers must consider respondents of the survey, ensuring respondents are competent and willing to answer. When constructing a questionnaire, surveys may begin with introductory comments and clear instruction. A well-written questionnaire format consists of one question per line; start with easy close-ended questions and work in necessary open-ended question throughout with demographic questions at the end to avoid any sort of behavioral or emotional change of respondent. The research question which we will be investigating in the study is how does socioeconomic status affect family involvement? To do so, family fun time activities will be distributed to families at HeadStart and the Andy Taylor Center. The families will then be surveyed on the demographics of the household, enjoyment of activities, and involvement of parents with child during activities. To operationally measure our dependent variable, family involvement, families will be blatantly asked, “On a scale of 0-10 (0 being not at all, 10 being very involved), how involved were you in the family fun time activity?” with a number line to drag to their appropriate number. We will ask the household income of families to operationally measure our dependent variable, socioeconomic status, with tax brackets of <10K, $10K-$30,999, $31K-$50,999, $51K-$70,999, $71K-$90,999, $91K+. These questions are ideal for our survey research as they properly outline our independent and dependent variables, are clear and concise, and are close ended which will allow for no room of unclear responses. With this, we will be able to clearly associate the socioeconomic status of families with the involvement of families in family fun time activities.