Survey+Question

Our current question is: how many students in our class attend classes and also have jobs outside of school?”

We need to work on this so it focuses on a problem/issue/concern for more than just students in our class. Work on this together as a class and create a modified question we can investigate.

1. How many full time WMU main campus students have part time or full time jobs? Issue Question: How much free time do full time WMU students have weekly? -Paige R. We are focusing on the issue question at this point. Particular questions for the survey/questionnaire will emerge later. So the issue raised here is one of "free time" since school and jobs tend to take away from that. You can edit Paige's question more OR you can raise another issue related to the current question that you see "hidden". Hope this helps clarify the task.

(PS don't forget to change your notices so you'll get changes via email) ﻿How about,

Does working affect the number of credit hours that full-time WMU students take? -Candis

that works but it would also but it would also have a level of hours that they work to how much home work and other time is used up. -Allison

i think allison raises a good issue. But i feel as though that would be a subset question for gathering our information. like, "if so, approximately how many hours a week do you work?" I feel as though Candis's question is kind of bias (no offense) because it's implying that work DOES affect the number of credit hours a full-time WMU student takes. we also need to establish the population we want to investigate. so here are some of the populations i think we can decide from: 1. Full-time/part-time 2. Male/Female 3. Grad/Undergrad 4. Work study/non-work study 5. LIVING on/off campus 6. WORKING on/off campus out of these populations, here are some of the questions that i came up with: How does working at a job affect a full-time WMU student? Are the amount of credit hours a full-time WMU student takes affected by the number of hours they work? How does working and going to school affect the amount of free time a full-time WMU student has? those are just a couple of my suggestions. -EMMA

Emma, I think all of those are great questions. I feel like the first one is the best however, because it is worded the best where it focuses more on how the person (population we are surveying) is affected. I think that full time is the best selection for our population since those who go to school part time probably have more free time on their hands and probably are not affected as much. Also if we were to chose just male or female that might also be bias so we should incorporate both males and females into our study. I also believe that we should just focus on under-grad so we could say "How does working at a job affect a full-time undergrad WMU student?" These are just a couple of suggestions, but I think that your questions is a good one to use!! ~Mallory Anthony

I think that most of the major questions have been brought up that we need to think about. I agree when the question should include full time students only because being a part time student probably means that they have a full time job or something else going on already. I am very interested in knowing how many full time students do have jobs because I know that I start class at 8 every day and work until 9 or 10 every night and it makes studying and homework a big challenge. I know the reason why I work is only because I need to pay my tuition and it would be interesting to ask a question about why people work to find out why they put so much pressure on themselves. This could lead into other questions about how tired are you throughout the school day or how much time do you have to spend doing homework? A lot of those questions would give us answers indirectly to the main question.

I also think a good way to conduct the survey is to ask people in a certain area of college(ex. undergrad or grad) I think that undergrad would be the best but that is just an idea. -Mallory Brownell

I second everything Mallory just said, and I think we should focus on undergrad education majors.... also, we should find out the relative amounts of males and females that are education majors to find out about how many of each should be included in our sample. I also like all the questions, they all do a really good job of refining what I was thinking with my pretty general question. At this point I think it's just a matter of figuring out which one we all ike the best :)

Candis

﻿I agree with all of the points here, especially the points both of the Mallorys brought up. I too have full time classes and work quite a bit of hours during the week, I think its a good idea to to find out the need people have to work. Also I agree with focusing on undergrad students, but I do think the question 'How does working affect the full time student' could be very vague and could bring in a very wide variety of answers, so I think we need to be careful with making our questions very specific. Brooklynn

﻿I agree a lot with the issues Malory B. has brought up. I agree that our survey should question why students feel the pressures of working full time in addition to taking a full load of classes. I also agree that we should focus more on undergrad students partly so we have the ability to better relate to their situations. I also like Emma's first question. although, it does come across as a little bias and think it should be phrased differently. One thing I would suggest to take into consideration when asking our questions is the demands students jobs may have. As an example, when I go into computer lab much of the time students working at the front desk have a lot of down time giving them the opportunity to work on their assignments, as opposed to students who work in more demanding environments that do not have that opportunity. This may alter the amount of hours they work and/or the amount of credits they sign up for. Brandy

Remember, we are writing a general research question for us; we do not ask this research question of the participants in the survey. The actual survey questions we create next will help us focus on more specific issues. So focus on the issue we want to research and study. Hope that helps. Good discussion, keep it up. Dr B.

I like the question that Mallory A stated which was "How does working at a job affect a full-time undergrad WMU student?" It is hitting the points of our broud question with how many student go to classes and have a job. It is just stated in a more formal and descripting way. I understand it has to be a question that we are not asking other participants so we have to rearrange words to make the question more presentable and that is where I am stuck. In the survey I would want this quesiton answered meaning we can't have this as our general research quesiton. I don't exactly know what to say, maybe something along the lines of..."How does the amount of hours a full-time undergrad WMU student spend working, affect the amount of hours they can put in school activities?" This needs help! - Jaelei

"How does working at a job affect a full-time undergrad WMU student?" I like this question I do agree with Jaelei, the question could have broad answers.But maybe the survey can help narrow the answers down. - Sarah

**I like the "How does working at a job affect a full-time undergrad WMU student" also. The survey would help narrow down the answers depending on what questions we ask. - Melissa**

I like the question the last few people have stated. I think it allows us to have more questions for the actual survey where I feel some other questions may be limiting as to what we are able to ask.- Ashley G

after reading everyone's interpretations, i do agree with a lot of you. it's harder for me to focus on the big picture when sometimes i can be so detail oriented. so i do agree with "How does working at a job affect a full-time undergrad WMU student?" i believe the population shouldn't just be education majors though because i feel as though that narrows our population too much and i personally would like a broader range. We could possibly put that as a survey question though. i'm really excited about this project guys! :D -Emma

I realize that I am late to this conversation and perhaps this has been cleared up, but I just want to be sure that I understand. So, we are doing just general undergraduate students with any major and not just undergrad education majors? Is this correct? -Brittany N.