Who? Group Work
What? An online survey
Where? Shared on Social Media/ PBL Folder
Deadline: TBA
Grading:: Marks of out 15. This will be 1% of your final course grade.
Rubric: See Appendix 12
You need to collect some data about what people know or think about your problem.
In this assignment you will do the following:
Write a minimum of 5 to 6 questions to find out the perceptions of a sample of Oman’s population about your problem. See Appendix 3 for help with question forms.
You should ask about how important or serious this problem is. You can also ask about what people think the causes and effects of the problem are. You should not ask about the solutions. This is what your later research will be.
Try to use a mix of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ question types.
Don’t ask questions with obvious answers. For example, “Do you think global warming is a big problem?”
Check these questions with your teacher.
Ensure your sample size is a minimum of 20 people.
Use an online survey tool such as Google Forms or Survey Monkey to create your survey.
Send your survey to your sample population using Social Media.
Submit an example/link of your survey to the PBL Folder
Analyze your data results and create charts of the most important/surprising findings to put in your upcoming Research Proposal.
Share your results with your teacher.
You will also use this information in the Introduction section of your Poster as well as in your Research Proposal and Presentation.
A 'closed' question has only a few possible answers, usually 'yes', 'no'. These questions begin with verbs such as 'do you', 'can', 'are'. These questions create quantitative answers that are easy to count in numbers (13 no's and 4 yes's for example). They are easy to put into graphs. They often don't give much detail.
An 'open' question has no limit to the types of answers. They usually begin with 'Wh' question words like 'what', 'why', or 'How often/much..?; etc. These types of questions give many different and interesting qualitative responses, but they are difficult to count or show in graphs. You may need to categorise the answers into groups first, such as 'very sure answers',or 'not very sure answers', or 'detailed answers' or 'not detailed answers'.
Both Google Forms and Survey Monkey allow you to export the answers, or responses to your survey. They will automatically show these as graphs or charts.
You do not need to make a graph for each question. You should choose two or three questions that gave you clear, interesting or surprising results. For example, if 90% of your sample population said they are not worried about Global Warming, that would be an unusual or surprising result that you might want to share. It might tell you something about the type of people who answered your questions. If most of your population didn't know anything about your problem, that also tells you something important about awareness among people.
Your Sample Population is made up of all the people you are going to target with your survey. You need to decide who you want to answer your questions. Anyone and everyone? Just students? Only Omanis? People who live in cities? People affected by the problem?
Your answer to this depends on the kind of information you want to collect. Do you want very general answers from the general population, or do you want to get some detail from people who have actual experience of the problem? Remember that the wider your population, the easier it will be to collect a lot of data. The more targeted your population, the more specific the information you will hopefully get.