Let's+discuss+our+survey+questions

media type="custom" key="9314184" width="180" height="180"

"What is your overall GPA? Please respond accurate to one decimal place, such as 2.5." Dr B.

Post here (or perhaps on the discussion section associated with this page, you guys decide but let people know!) your comments regarding these questions. Ideally, on Wed, I can walk into class and say "Okay, I see these are the questions you want to use." So chat away so Wed morning we can move on. Thanks

Questions for our survey focusing on: ** How does working at a job affect a full-time undergraduate WMU student? ** 1. How many credit hours are you taking this semester?

2. What is your overall GPA? **We talked a little in class about putting this into categories such as 2-2.49 2.5-2.99 and so on, so there wouldn't be SO many different answers. It was suggested that we wait until after the survey was completed to do this, but I think it would just create excess work for us. I don't see any point in not doing the categories to begin with.** Our final sample (not the pilot) won't be so huge that this should be a problem. We do need to have two numerical variables for the final project, too, that we can examine for relationships. So I'm going to suggest you keep it open HOWEVER, indicate how you want the student to respond, e.g. 2.5 (one decimal place) or 2.49 (two decimal places). So:

"What is your overall GPA? Please respond accurate to one decimal place, such as 2.5." Dr B.

I think that by not doing this until after the end we can see what type of groupings we are going to need that will better suit the answer that we are trying to get, as opposed to automatically grouping them from the beginning.

3. How many hours on average do you have for homework each day? - Instead of each day...maybe each week? I agree that it should be each week, because not everyone who works, works every day. So the average for each day could be different... So will you be comparing this number to how many hours they work each week? What will you be looking for in the comparison? I think week is a good idea, too, since #7 in also per week. Dr B

7. How many hours a week do you work at your job? a)1-10 b)11-20 c)21-40 d)41-+ How about for the pilot we exclude the intervals and see the range of values we get. We need two numerical variables and right now we do have two (#2 & 3) but I'm worried there won't be much of a relationship between those two items. Dr B I think this should be one of our numerical variables, especially because there is a big difference between working 20 and 30 hours a week, and homework and time for school would be very affected by even the difference between working 10 and 15 hours a week. Asking for exact numbers might help us see sort of a more detailed relationship between hours worked and time for school.

8 How far of a commute is it to your job from campus? a)0-10 minutes b)11-20 minutes c)21-30 minutes d) 31-+ I think that this question should be changed to "How far of a commute is it to your job from your home?" It just doesn't make sense to ask them how far is it from campus, because people could come from their house and that is where they will probably going back too. Or we could ask "How far is your commute to work and back?", so that we could get a sense of how long they are traveling each day. Given that thought of traveling, how about "Approximately how much time do you have to spend driving to work and back (to either school or home) each week?" I changed it to week again to keep the same unit of time as #7 and we don't know that they have to go to work every day so simply multiplying their daily drive by 5 or 7 might not be appropriate to do. I realize though, that thinking about a whole week might be a challenge. What do you think? Dr B

11. What is your major? Our group talked about keeping this question to keep in mind that different areas of study require huge differences in time and effort outside of class. For example, we all probably spend lots of time out of class, and nursing students spend even more, while others may not have to study or have as many projects... so working a lot may affect a nursing or education major much more than others

12.The reason for working while in school? (ex: rent, bills, tuition, family...) **Maybe for this one, we could have categories (instead of the parenthesis) like;** **A. Rent** **B. Bills** **C. Tuition** **D. Support Family** **E. Other: _** **or with different categories too.**

I like the new multiple choice, but is the question necessary? I feel like it's not needed as much as the others....? What do ya think?
 * I was thinking the same thing. I don't think that it is a good question to ask... I don't think that the answers would answer our question. I think that it is safe to assume that if a college student is working, it is because they don't get the support they need from some other source. **

I don't think we need this question either.
 * I think this could be a problem question due to the fact that it could be more than one reason. Somebody could need the money for rent, bills, and tuition all in the same. Then we are asking them to prioritize what they feel is the most important. ﻿**

25. What is your job? -Sales -Management -Food Services -Other ___(please specify) We felt this question was getting at detail we couldn't really use in response to our original question so we are deleting it and keeping #26 to get at the issue of having time at work to do homework. Dr B

26. Does your job have free time do any homework? If yes, how much time? or No