Discussion Post: Coming Back to Research
End-of-course student surveys exist for you to share your anonymous feedback on your courses. The purpose of the survey is to gather data from a specific population (you, the students) to understand your experience in the course, and to determine areas of success and improvement in our courses, including this one (so hopefully you do share your feedback because we always want to improve our courses and teaching).
As mentioned, research is fundamental in the social sciences, and a survey is a common sociological data collection method. If we look at the course surveys from a sociological perspective, we see that they are used to understand a specific population's perspective of a social experience/issue. For this discussion, then, you will observe and analyze and evaluate the survey itself, as the budding social scientists you all now are, based on your learning in this course!
Now, to come full circle, analyze the end-of-course surveys for their effectiveness as a sociological measurement tool.
For the initial post, respond to one of the following options, and label the beginning of your post indicating either Option I or Option II:
• Option I: How would you improve the survey itself to create the best snapshot of student impressions of this or any Chamberlain University Online course?
• Option II: What specific change or changes would you make in the survey, or in how it is administered, in order to increase the survey's reliability and/or validity? Remember, as you learned, reliability is consistency in results and validity asks the question: "Are you measuring what you intended to measure?
The response should include a reference list. Double-space, using Times New Roman 12 pnt font, one-inch margins, and APA style of writing and citations.