Designing a survey? Sounds easy! Oh no, it's actually not easy at all! Let me share with you how I designed a survey on multicultural education. My Wicked Problem is "How to integrate a multicultural curriculum into Chinese immersion classrooms for young students and foster an awareness of cultural diversity among all students?" I believe that multicultural education helps promoting students’ open-mindedness and cultural competence.
For this survey, I came up with 15 questions that I found particularly interesting (see image). These questions varied in length and difficulty. I referred to the content on survey design on D2L, and wow! I never realized there were so many details to consider for such a small survey!
For example:
- Know the point of your survey
- Use clear and concise language
- Keep it as short as possible
- Ensure the survey is anonymous
(D2L, 2024)
After reading it, I rewrote each question (see image), removed anything unrelated to the question, shortened long questions, and rephrased unclear questions. I found the most challenging parts are: first, ensuring accuracy while reducing word count. Sometimes, after trimming, the meaning became unclear, so I had to rewrite. Second, choosing the response format: multiple-choice, single-choice, open-ended, yes or no, scale from 1 to 5, etc. It was really taxing! My approach was to imagine myself as the respondent and consider how to design questions to make it “user-friendly”. The most difficult question was "How would you rate yourself in terms of being aware of biases and stereotypes?" It's subjective, but as a teacher, self-reflection and questioning are crucial! So, I chose to use a 1-5 rating scale for respondents to rate themselves. I believe this question is worth considering and valuable!
Image created by Luxin Xue
Survey Design Before and After
References:
Zumpano, N. (2024). CEP 812 5.4 Explore Survey Design. d2l.msu.edu.
https://d2l.msu.edu/d2l/le/content/1872351/viewContent/15576429/View