For a short mid-term survey of his students, a Graduate Student ...

[jerry coleman]

For a short mid-term survey of his students, a Graduate Student Instructor has put four questions on a piece of paper. He is planning to hand these out this afternoon. The last two questions are: (1) What grade do you think you are getting in the course? and (2) What grade would you give the instructor so far? Both questions can be answered with A, B, C, D, or F. What is a potential problem with these questions?

Question 2

The biggest problem with open questions is that the results can be difficult to summarize. If closed-form questions are preferred, explain how a pilot survey might be used to better formulate the closed-form questions.

[jennafosdick]

Answer to Question 1

The order of the questions could influence the answers of the students. Students who are not doing well in the course may be affected by that thought and give the instructor a bad grade, even though he is doing well.

Answer to Question 2

The closed-form questions should first be presented as open questions in a pilot survey to a test sample before the real survey is conducted. Then the most common responses to the open questions can be included in the list of choices for the closed questions in the actual survey.

[jerry coleman]

TYSM

[bdobbins]

Excellent