Where my last post I established why it is important to have a survey free of errors, this post will discuss the content that each well crafted question is able to get; but no conclusions.
I begin again with the question making process of a survey. My survey had to do with advertisements like in my previous post “My Archival Finds“. I didn’t know exactly what kind of qualitative data I was seeking, but with well formulated questions I know that I could get good data to apply… to something… somehow….
Since I had to keep my surveyee’s somewhat interested, I figured that it was best to have a short survey. I used the Likert scale in addition to two fill in the blank for more insightful information. Since this was my first survey, before I sent it out into the world I thought that it was in pretty good shape. I thought that sharing it to my friends on Facebook was also a good way to send it on a quest for data.
A Tribe Called QUEST
The data I found is different than I had expected– but I guess that’s not a bad thing? In my mind, I figured since most of my friends in real life are in college, that the 18-21 age group would be the primary age group to fill up my survey responses. I was shocked to see that I got 37 responses in four days and 12 of those responses were from 16 year olds. Most of them were girls (I discovered this because I can look at each post individually and observe what gender corresponded to each age).
The information that 32% of data that I got about surveys was from Sophomores and Juniors in high school. Although I think that the data is still useable, I think this information will allow me to make sense of this data in a different way than expected.
I had expected to find information that held some answers as to what types of advertisements that college students were most commonly exposed to. Almost unanimously, the people that I surveyed claimed that they viewed advertisements most regularly on “the internet”, “online”, or on “social media”. No matter the age group, teenagers to middle-aged people, my survey questions brought me to the conclusion that most people viewed advertisements online.
Although, I think that some data was skewed when I asked a question near the end for only people currently in college to answer and there were more answers that strayed far from the college age group. Based off the majority of my friends on Facebook, not many people outside of the college age (18-22 ish) were currently still in college. So, now I am aware in the future that a question must not have been well written causing it to be misconstrued by many.
Although my answers gave me a learning experience in terms of writing questions, I also know now that the platform that I use to distribute my survey is very important to consider. I can’t say that it is a bad thing that my data was primarily from a younger age group, but I can say that it will change how I am able to interpret the data.
Until next time…. the research expedition continues!