Questionnaire Assignment

Fall 2005

Part I.

You have been assigned to a group whose assignment is to come up with a topic for which you want to develop a questionnaire. Once you have selected your topic and had it improved by your instructor, you want to develop one or more hypotheses that relates to your topic. Once your hypotheses have been approved by your instructor, your group will develop a questionnaire that operationalize the variables used in your hypotheses. Once the questionnaire is created and approved by your instructor, you will want to administer the questionnaire to some convenience sample. Each person in your group should give the questionnaire to 10 people.

Please note: While your questionnaires will be anonymous in that no personal information will appear in them, please do not discuss the results of questionnaires you collected with anyone. If you divulge information collected in any one questionnaire to other people, you will receive a '0' for the assignment.

Also note that if the group is interested in a sensitive topic, like drug use or sexual behavior or any other topic that is illegal or may be embarassing, you will have to get permission from the Human Subjects Committee. This may take 2 or 3 weeks to obtain.

We will then enter the data and your instructor will analyze the data for you. Based upon the analysis of the data you will write a paper. The paper is organized as a standard research paper. Therefore it contains four sections: an introduction, a methods section, a results section, and a conclusion.

The introduction provides the context for understanding the plausibility of your hypothesis. It states the problem you are interested in and why the problem is interesting or important. This should take about one paragraph. Following your introduction is the formal statement of the hypothesis(es) you are going to test. If you have more than one hypothesis, you need to state them all. Usually when multiple hypotheses are stated, each hypothesis is preceded by consecutive numbers.

The methods section is a description of how we conducted the study. It starts off by stating how the data were gathered. Who made up the sample? You then describe how you measured your variables. That is, describe the section of the questionnaire that relates to the variables you are using. You should not describe the entire survey; only the variables you are using.

The results section presents your analysis. The results section should contain table(s) and/or graph(s) that summarize the statistical results. You should graph results in Excel. In the text refer to the graphs and to the statistical results provided to you by your instructor. That is, you must include in the text of your paper  the significance results of the statistics run for you. Once you state that your data were supported or not supported by your data, you then insert in parentheses what the significance level of the relationship was.

The conclusion starts off by summarizing the results. It then relates them back to your hypothesis(es). Did you find support for your hypothesis(es) or not? It then talks about weaknesses of the study and how to improve it if it were done again. Finally, it relates the findings to the first paragraph of the paper, that is, back to the context.

Papers need to be typed, preferably on a word processor. Tables and/or graphs may be included in the text or in an appendix.

Part II. Questionnaire Design

Your questionnaire should be:

1. typed
2. follow good questionnaire design
3. free of obvious grammatical and spelling errors

The paper will count for 60% of the grade and the questionnaire will count for 40% of the grade. Please submit a copy of the questionnaire with your final paper. You will be assessed according to the following criteria:

Part II. Research Paper

Your paper should contain the following elements:

	Cover page
	0 points
	Introduction
	10 points	10 points	Paper establishes an excellent context explaining why reader should be interested or why it is important
		8 points	Paper establishes a good context
		7 points	Paper establishes a fair context
		5 points	Paper establishes a poor context
		0 points	No context
	Hypothesis(es)
	10 points	10 points	Hypothesis is well stated
		7 points	Hypothesis has minor problem
		4 points	Hypothesis has a major problem
		0 points	No hypothesis
	Methods
	10 points	10 points	Paper explains how data are collected and how variables are measured
		8 points	Minor problems with methods
		6 points	Problems with data collection or measurement of variables
		4 points	Problems with data collection and measurement of variables
	Results
	20 points	Charts
		20 points	Charts are free of problems
		16 points	1-2 problems with charts
		12 points	3-4 problems with charts
		8 points	5 or more problems with charts
	20 points	Written results
		20 points	Charts and statistical results are accurately described in the text
		16 points	1 or 2 problems with description
		12 points	3 or 4 problems with description
		8 points	5 or more problems with description
	40 points	Total
	Conclusion
	10 points	10 points	Results are summarized well, strengths and weaknesses are considered, and attempt made to relate back to original context
		8 points	Minor problems with conclusion
		6 points	One or more major problems
	Organization
	10 points	10 points	Paper is well organized so that all parts are found and developed coherently; headings used
		8 points	1 or 2 problems with organization
		6 points	3 or 4 problems with organization
		4 points	Major problems with organization
	Spelling and Grammar
	10 points	10 points	No glaring spelling or grammatical errors
		8 points	1 -2 problems
		6 points	3-4 problems
		4 points	5 or more problems
	100 points	Total