This survey is designed to help answer the question: How do parents feel about the student code of conduct/academic integrity policy in the school?
To whom should this survey be administered, why, and what challenges are there to accessing this audience?
This survey should be given to parents of students at said school. A few challenges that might come up are how to get the survey to all (or at least the majority) of parents in a form that they can comprehend and with assurance that they will be motivated to return the form (if paper copy). Depending on the school it may be best to use paper copies that are mailed out with a prepaid return envelope. At William Penn, many students don't have computer access at home, nor do many of the parents have email accounts. The paper copy will have to be available in Spanish, and Creole (as a number of Haitian students are attending WP). Finding a translator for the survey will be a challenge, as will finding the time to translate the survey successfully, and lastly, ascertaining which students should be mailed what version of the survey. I would think it would also be a good idea to have a designated person to be available for parent questions regarding the survey. This person should be available by phone and email at specified times. (JM)
I believe that this survey should be administered to all parents and guardians. A sruvey such as this will do a good job of gaining a baseline data set and hopefully gain information about behaviors current and past. A huge problem will be the language barrier as stated by Jess above. Another big problem will getting not only responses but responses in a timely manner. Many parents are much more accessable by email, the only challenge with that is getting a response. As we learned in class, if people don't respond right away then they won't answer it all. I think the challenge lies in relaying the importance of this survey so parents feel obligated to take it. (SHS)
This survey should be administered to all parents/guardians at the school. I believe it should be administered to all parents/guardians and not a sample of the population because the intended purpose of a survey is to get compelling results. With only sampling 50% of the population and potentially receiving 50% of that, the data will only be from 25% of parents. If a true perception of the school code of conduct and academic integrity of the school is the goal of the survey then sending the survey out to all families will not only provide us with the most possible responses it can also build good community relations and increase involvement in the school as a whole.
The major challenge to accessing our intended audience of parents is transience. Students change schools and districts (public, private, vocational, charter, school choice) every year and along the way live in many different households. Keeping track of contact information is much more difficult that keeping a database on excel or collecting emergency contact cards because many physical addresses, phone numbers, names and e-mail addresses change from year to year. Additionally, once the target audience is accessed getting responses back to the survey is another obstacle all together. Lastly, no matter the medium the survey is to be administered what real incentive is there for the parent/guardian to complete the survey? What is the penalty for not completing the survey? Moreover, even if the entire population could be accessed getting back a high percentage of responses will be difficult and even more difficult to enforce. (WMJ)
I am going to partially disagree with surveying the entire parent/guardian population. Responding to this survey thoughtfully would take time. Many of the questions I read presuppose that parents/guardians have read the student code of conduct/academic integrity policy thoroughly. I think a stratified sample would be the best way to ensure a thoughtful survey responses. A stratified sample would allow the school to survey groups that may not respond to a general survey. I would predict that the majority of parents/guardians that would fill out a generic paper or email survey would be parents/guardians who are very active at the school or parents/guardians who have issues with the current student code of conduct/academic integrity policy. If the school wants to attain a representative sample, the stratified sample would be most effective. A more general survey could be administered school-wide before sampling the population. This could lend focus to the stratified sample survey. (DL)
I would attempt to survey as many parents/guardians as possible. Bernhardt (page 83) states that "We usually include everyone because we want all participants to know their opinions were sought and will be considered." I believe it is very important to give as many parents as possible the opportunity to give input in order to get maximum buy-in on the student code of conduct/academic integrity policy. There are clearly a number of challenges in gaining access to the parents. Many parents are very busy just making a living. I believe that a number of methods to contact and survery parents would be wise. First, I would send an email to every parent/guardian contact that the school has access to. In this email I would explain the option of logging on to survey monkey, stopping by the school for parent/teacher conferences, back to school night, or any other school activity where computers and trained personnel would be available to help parents/guardians to take the survey on-line. For those parents/guardians that do not have an email account, I would take the time to either phone or send information to them on how to get access to a survey. I would also provide a paper copy for those parents who request one, who are uncomfortable using computers, who do not have access to a computer, and for parents/ guardians who cannot come to the school. Staff members would then have to add these results by hand to survey monkey. For all of the above methods, I would also make the survey available in languages that are a part of the school community. (SW)
I agree with parent/guardian grup but would also run a complete attempt towards all teachers in the school/district as well to get a comparative baseline between the two groups. (JY)
Administer this survey to parents, students, teachers, and local community organizations/leaders. I believe that if we consider local organizations part of the community and influential to the school's culture, then they are relivant to the survey. Moreover, great care is required to include "all" members of the community, rather than the largest number of returned surveys. This may require door-to-door inquiries to "shut-ins", handicapped, non-compliant, or unresponsive community members. Prior to distributing the survey, I would send an announcement detailing the intent of the survey, sample survey questions, proposed date for actual survey, contact names with methods of contacts, and feedback dates. Allowing enough time between the announcement and the actual survey to receive and consider additional input from potential survey participants. Staffing should be increased and roles determined to estabish automaticity of procedures to increase production and reduce turnaround time for data collection and review. (WH)
How should this survey be administered, why, and what challenges are there to using this mode?
I think it may be best to administer this survey in both paper and electronically via email. There should be a database of all available parent e-mail accounts to use for surveys as well as home addresses. Ascertaining the languages of parents/guardians should be done at the beginning of the school year so that surveys can be mailed in the appropriate language. Foreseeable challenges may be the cost of paper surveys (especially at a large school such as WP, as well as having a dependable person/persons to be in charge of this survey (mailing, being available for questions or problems). There may be parents who cannot read, or are blind. They will need special services, such as survey via the phone. The time necessary to commit to do this survey well necessitates great foresight by those administering the survey in terms of the quality of the questions, format of the survey, and method of dispersal. (JM) I believe that this survey should be administered by email. Doing this will mean a fast response. But another option will be more accessibility to parents who speak a foreign language as their main language. With simple links they can click, a true and accurate response will come forth. The challenges will be getting accurate emails from students and/or their parents. I feel that some parents may not want to share their email addresses. One way to tackle this problem would be to ask parents for their emails incase of an emergency. This will assure the most accurate emial data base. (SHS)
I believe multiple approaches could be effective in administering our survey such as mentioned above by Jess and Sterling. Two additional methods I believe that could be utilized would be for a paper survey to be sent home at the beginning of the school year with a code of conduct or a paper survey to be completed by parents at open house/parent-teacher conferences/strategic planning meetings/Title I meetings. I believe families would feel comfortable completing the survey at their homes with a copy of the code of conduct to use as a reference. Also, multiple forms are often sent home at the start of a new school year; families would be accustomed to filling out paperwork at this time and would fit in with their expectations. I also believe administering the survey during meetings with families would further improve the response rate. Families would already be present at the school and be willing to share their views and perceptions on this issue. Also, it would allow for clarifications if a parent/guardian had a question/concern.
The challenges to using these modes would be the expense of creating paper forms to be sent home for every student and having readily available survey’s at every school meeting. Also, ensuring that completed survey’s that were sent home are returned to school would be a challenge. Providing postage instead of trusting students to return the survey could help soften the blow of this challenge but would raise the cost of the administration of the survey. Also, ensuring that families have the knowledge to comprehend the questions on the survey could curtail completed responses. Finally, when administering the survey to a large group at a meeting some parents/guardians may rush to leave the meeting or leave without handing in the survey altogether. (WMJ)I believe face-to-face interviews would be the best way to survey a stratified sample. Though time intensive, the responses can be more complex (more open-ended responses). I believe a face-to-face interview will also allow the surveyors to assure that the respondents have read the student code of conduct/academic integrity policies. Actual reading could be built into the survey process. I also think face-to-face interviews demonstrate that the school is serious about learning about what parents think about their conduct/integrity policies. Time and human resources are the most serious obstacles in conducting face-to-face interviews. Face-to-face interviews take time because the interviewer and interviewee need to coordinate schedules. The interview itself takes much more time than a paper and internet survey. The human resources needed are also substantial. In multilingual populations interpreters would need to accompany interviewers. Unless the school's purpose is to seriously reflect upon their conduct/integrity policy, the face-to-face interviews may be prohibitive in terms of time and resources. (DL)
I would administer this survey using survey monkey on-line whenever possible. If parents don't have access or feel uncomfortable, I would give paper surveys, and have staff members enter those responses electronically on survey monkey. Using survey monkey allows for quick statistical analysis of responses. I would utilize email to contact parents, explain the purpose of the survey, and give directions on how to use survey monkey. For parents who do not have email, I would contact them through mail, phone, or their children to get information to them. For parents who do not have computer access, or computer skills, I would encourage parents to come to back to school night, parent/teacher conferences, or special events where computer rooms, paper copies, and trained staff would be available to administer the surveys. (SW)
It's 2010, electroniec all the way. Avail resources to all, and offer a backup manual method, but the push should be 100% online. The challenges are failing to get to those without access to technology and making that access a reality (transportation, etc) This method is fast and accurate. (JY)
To whom should this survey be administered, why, and what challenges are there to accessing this audience?
This survey should be given to parents of students at said school. A few challenges that might come up are how to get the survey to all (or at least the majority) of parents in a form that they can comprehend and with assurance that they will be motivated to return the form (if paper copy). Depending on the school it may be best to use paper copies that are mailed out with a prepaid return envelope. At William Penn, many students don't have computer access at home, nor do many of the parents have email accounts. The paper copy will have to be available in Spanish, and Creole (as a number of Haitian students are attending WP). Finding a translator for the survey will be a challenge, as will finding the time to translate the survey successfully, and lastly, ascertaining which students should be mailed what version of the survey. I would think it would also be a good idea to have a designated person to be available for parent questions regarding the survey. This person should be available by phone and email at specified times. (JM)
I believe that this survey should be administered to all parents and guardians. A sruvey such as this will do a good job of gaining a baseline data set and hopefully gain information about behaviors current and past. A huge problem will be the language barrier as stated by Jess above. Another big problem will getting not only responses but responses in a timely manner. Many parents are much more accessable by email, the only challenge with that is getting a response. As we learned in class, if people don't respond right away then they won't answer it all. I think the challenge lies in relaying the importance of this survey so parents feel obligated to take it. (SHS)
This survey should be administered to all parents/guardians at the school. I believe it should be administered to all parents/guardians and not a sample of the population because the intended purpose of a survey is to get compelling results. With only sampling 50% of the population and potentially receiving 50% of that, the data will only be from 25% of parents. If a true perception of the school code of conduct and academic integrity of the school is the goal of the survey then sending the survey out to all families will not only provide us with the most possible responses it can also build good community relations and increase involvement in the school as a whole.
The major challenge to accessing our intended audience of parents is transience. Students change schools and districts (public, private, vocational, charter, school choice) every year and along the way live in many different households. Keeping track of contact information is much more difficult that keeping a database on excel or collecting emergency contact cards because many physical addresses, phone numbers, names and e-mail addresses change from year to year. Additionally, once the target audience is accessed getting responses back to the survey is another obstacle all together. Lastly, no matter the medium the survey is to be administered what real incentive is there for the parent/guardian to complete the survey? What is the penalty for not completing the survey? Moreover, even if the entire population could be accessed getting back a high percentage of responses will be difficult and even more difficult to enforce. (WMJ)
I am going to partially disagree with surveying the entire parent/guardian population. Responding to this survey thoughtfully would take time. Many of the questions I read presuppose that parents/guardians have read the student code of conduct/academic integrity policy thoroughly. I think a stratified sample would be the best way to ensure a thoughtful survey responses. A stratified sample would allow the school to survey groups that may not respond to a general survey. I would predict that the majority of parents/guardians that would fill out a generic paper or email survey would be parents/guardians who are very active at the school or parents/guardians who have issues with the current student code of conduct/academic integrity policy. If the school wants to attain a representative sample, the stratified sample would be most effective. A more general survey could be administered school-wide before sampling the population. This could lend focus to the stratified sample survey. (DL)
I would attempt to survey as many parents/guardians as possible. Bernhardt (page 83) states that "We usually include everyone because we want all participants to know their opinions were sought and will be considered." I believe it is very important to give as many parents as possible the opportunity to give input in order to get maximum buy-in on the student code of conduct/academic integrity policy. There are clearly a number of challenges in gaining access to the parents. Many parents are very busy just making a living. I believe that a number of methods to contact and survery parents would be wise. First, I would send an email to every parent/guardian contact that the school has access to. In this email I would explain the option of logging on to survey monkey, stopping by the school for parent/teacher conferences, back to school night, or any other school activity where computers and trained personnel would be available to help parents/guardians to take the survey on-line. For those parents/guardians that do not have an email account, I would take the time to either phone or send information to them on how to get access to a survey. I would also provide a paper copy for those parents who request one, who are uncomfortable using computers, who do not have access to a computer, and for parents/ guardians who cannot come to the school. Staff members would then have to add these results by hand to survey monkey. For all of the above methods, I would also make the survey available in languages that are a part of the school community. (SW)
I agree with parent/guardian grup but would also run a complete attempt towards all teachers in the school/district as well to get a comparative baseline between the two groups. (JY)
Administer this survey to parents, students, teachers, and local community organizations/leaders. I believe that if we consider local organizations part of the community and influential to the school's culture, then they are relivant to the survey. Moreover, great care is required to include "all" members of the community, rather than the largest number of returned surveys. This may require door-to-door inquiries to "shut-ins", handicapped, non-compliant, or unresponsive community members. Prior to distributing the survey, I would send an announcement detailing the intent of the survey, sample survey questions, proposed date for actual survey, contact names with methods of contacts, and feedback dates. Allowing enough time between the announcement and the actual survey to receive and consider additional input from potential survey participants. Staffing should be increased and roles determined to estabish automaticity of procedures to increase production and reduce turnaround time for data collection and review. (WH)
How should this survey be administered, why, and what challenges are there to using this mode?
I think it may be best to administer this survey in both paper and electronically via email. There should be a database of all available parent e-mail accounts to use for surveys as well as home addresses. Ascertaining the languages of parents/guardians should be done at the beginning of the school year so that surveys can be mailed in the appropriate language. Foreseeable challenges may be the cost of paper surveys (especially at a large school such as WP, as well as having a dependable person/persons to be in charge of this survey (mailing, being available for questions or problems). There may be parents who cannot read, or are blind. They will need special services, such as survey via the phone. The time necessary to commit to do this survey well necessitates great foresight by those administering the survey in terms of the quality of the questions, format of the survey, and method of dispersal. (JM)
I believe that this survey should be administered by email. Doing this will mean a fast response. But another option will be more accessibility to parents who speak a foreign language as their main language. With simple links they can click, a true and accurate response will come forth. The challenges will be getting accurate emails from students and/or their parents. I feel that some parents may not want to share their email addresses. One way to tackle this problem would be to ask parents for their emails incase of an emergency. This will assure the most accurate emial data base. (SHS)
I believe multiple approaches could be effective in administering our survey such as mentioned above by Jess and Sterling. Two additional methods I believe that could be utilized would be for a paper survey to be sent home at the beginning of the school year with a code of conduct or a paper survey to be completed by parents at open house/parent-teacher conferences/strategic planning meetings/Title I meetings. I believe families would feel comfortable completing the survey at their homes with a copy of the code of conduct to use as a reference. Also, multiple forms are often sent home at the start of a new school year; families would be accustomed to filling out paperwork at this time and would fit in with their expectations. I also believe administering the survey during meetings with families would further improve the response rate. Families would already be present at the school and be willing to share their views and perceptions on this issue. Also, it would allow for clarifications if a parent/guardian had a question/concern.
The challenges to using these modes would be the expense of creating paper forms to be sent home for every student and having readily available survey’s at every school meeting. Also, ensuring that completed survey’s that were sent home are returned to school would be a challenge. Providing postage instead of trusting students to return the survey could help soften the blow of this challenge but would raise the cost of the administration of the survey. Also, ensuring that families have the knowledge to comprehend the questions on the survey could curtail completed responses. Finally, when administering the survey to a large group at a meeting some parents/guardians may rush to leave the meeting or leave without handing in the survey altogether. (WMJ)I believe face-to-face interviews would be the best way to survey a stratified sample. Though time intensive, the responses can be more complex (more open-ended responses). I believe a face-to-face interview will also allow the surveyors to assure that the respondents have read the student code of conduct/academic integrity policies. Actual reading could be built into the survey process. I also think face-to-face interviews demonstrate that the school is serious about learning about what parents think about their conduct/integrity policies. Time and human resources are the most serious obstacles in conducting face-to-face interviews. Face-to-face interviews take time because the interviewer and interviewee need to coordinate schedules. The interview itself takes much more time than a paper and internet survey. The human resources needed are also substantial. In multilingual populations interpreters would need to accompany interviewers. Unless the school's purpose is to seriously reflect upon their conduct/integrity policy, the face-to-face interviews may be prohibitive in terms of time and resources. (DL)
I would administer this survey using survey monkey on-line whenever possible. If parents don't have access or feel uncomfortable, I would give paper surveys, and have staff members enter those responses electronically on survey monkey. Using survey monkey allows for quick statistical analysis of responses. I would utilize email to contact parents, explain the purpose of the survey, and give directions on how to use survey monkey. For parents who do not have email, I would contact them through mail, phone, or their children to get information to them. For parents who do not have computer access, or computer skills, I would encourage parents to come to back to school night, parent/teacher conferences, or special events where computer rooms, paper copies, and trained staff would be available to administer the surveys. (SW)
It's 2010, electroniec all the way. Avail resources to all, and offer a backup manual method, but the push should be 100% online. The challenges are failing to get to those without access to technology and making that access a reality (transportation, etc) This method is fast and accurate. (JY)