Human Development 302 (research methods) Survey Assignment

I would like you to practice creating survey questions. First, think of a survey study you could conduct on the topic area you are interested in for your senior project. Think carefully about who your sample would be and how the survey could be distributed. Think about how many participants you would want to recruit and who those participants would be (age, gender, etc). Think about the procedure you would use to distribute your survey to them. Part of your grade on this assignment will be based on how realistic your research design is, including your descriiption of your participants and procedures. Come up with a 10 question survey that addresses in some way the topic area you are interested in. All the survey questions should be closed ended. At least 5 of the items in your survey should be on a Likert scale. For example, if you are interested in the impact of early intervention programs on academic performance is school children, you could come up with a 5 item Likert scale survey that asks elementary school teachers questions about their attitudes towards such intervention programs. For example:
1) Early intervention is critical to improving academic performance in later grades
2) Teachers should recommend a specialized program for students who seem to be struggling
3) Programs like head start are almost always effective
4) The reason some children underperform in higher grades is that their educational needs were not attended to earlier
5) More funding is needed for early childhood intervention programs
Each of these can be responded to on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. You would then add 5 additional closed ended questions (they could be multiple alternative, or rating scale, or any of the examples in the Babbie chapter.

Please take the time to think critically about the wording of your survey – how many points you receive will be based in part on the wording of the survey items. Note that your survey questions MUST be closed ended, and answered on a likert scale, multiple choice, or one of the scales described in Babbie. Do NOT use open ended items or simple yes/no questions. Use at least two different types of questions on your survey. Surveys that are too simple or too general to address the specific question you are interested in get no points, so put time and effort into developing really good questions.

Write a 3 – 5 page APA style Method section that includes your survey (12 point font, 1 inch margins, double spaced). Start by reviewing section 3.6 in chapter 3 of your APA manual (page 82 in the print version). The paper should start with an APA style title page (with a title that describes some important aspect of the life story, you name, affiliation, running head), followed by a short (around 250 – 300 word) abstract that describes the topic you are interested in and outlines the survey study you propose. After the abstract, please include an APA style Method section (pay attention to how sections headings and subheadings should be formatted in APA style – this information can be found in chapter 2 of your APA manual, there are examples of what a Method section should look like in your manual as well). For participants, describe a hypothetical sample – pay attention to the APA standards for what should be included in each subsection of a Method section (see chapter 3 of your APA manual, section 3.6). Under the Materials subheading, include your 10 survey questions as well as any other material you may want to use for the study. Under the Procedures subheading, describe how the survey would be distributed to your participants. Part of your grade on the assignment will be based on the detail you provide in each subsection of the Method section.