Research Question Due to many survey research questions being posed so frequently and answered by different research participants, it is very important to know what about the question will affect the answers that the participants give. The population of this study was the students of Washington State University Pullman, and they were given multiple
The purpose of this article is to report the results of these research questions given to WSU Pullman students to help the understanding of how researchers have a huge effect on the answers given by participants in surveys and interviews, because the information is often flawed.
How does graphical and symbolic language change the results of survey questions …show more content…
For the first variable they used by changing the location of the instructions and questions, they were able to find significant results. If the Instructions were before the question, it did not really affect the amount of yes respondents, but had significant change for either answering no or simply not answering at all.
For instructions given before the question only 19.1% of participants answered no and when the instructions were given the instructions after the question, 40.3% answered no.
For missing answers when instructions were given before 26.2% of participants missed the question, but when the instructions were given after only 4.8% of participants missed the questions.
For the Variable of Size of answer space there was also significant results. Varying the size of answer space both affected number of words respondents gave as well as the number of themes they provided. First they tried by manipulating the questions by adding lines to the answer spaces. The longer the answer line was or if there were multiple answer lines made participants give longer and better answers to the question given. By using a directional error in the answering area gave results showing that respondents focus on about 2 degrees (8-10 characters) of eye site when answering …show more content…
What I liked
I liked the fact that these researchers are trying to answer new questions, while using many forms of research to identify their answer. It is an important and confusing question, which was asked, but I liked the fact this was the first article I have ever read on the specific topic.
Problems
1) It was conducted only by students at Washington State University, which is a large population, but it is a population of people who are all attending the same school, and I believe it would be better to use this study on multiple schools not just colleges, where people might have different opinions or more experience answering survey/questionnaires
2) Because it was just WSU Pullman students, it is not that big of a community and people could have been talking to each other about the study
3) There could have been maturation effects during this study because it was done during multiple times.
4) This study should probably be replicated because there could have been mistakes in the fact that it is simply generalizable to the WSU Pullman campus and is not generalizable the entire world by any sense.
What I