Melody Milbrandt summarizes how important demographics studies are to art education in her article “Descriptive Survey Research: Demographics and Beyond.” She clarifies the reasons specific groups need to be studied using statistic, quantitative, and qualitative methods. The assortment of ways in which one could conduct survey questionnaires is never ending. Active participants could be interviewed, observed, questioned, polled, etc. and the information revealed from these types of studies can result in improvements that help targeted populations. Research is especially important to help sustain the growth of educational programs focused on teaching, student teachers, practicing educators, and professors who train professionals in the field of teaching. Strong survey questions are clear and designed so that they are not ambiguous to provide more validity. Queries are also constructed so that they are simplified in a concise/easy-to-read fashion. They are developed in such a way that they directly relate to the specific participants involved. In order to promote candid and honest feedback, most researchers allow for participants to remain anonymous throughout the study. If mathematical information is interpreted by means of counting, measuring, or comparing data then the survey research is determined to be quantitative in nature. Qualitative information may involve numerical data, too, but is used predominately when more open-ended questions become part of the study. Qualitative methods allow for a more individualized “human voice of participants to be heard.”
1 Comment
Liv
6/9/2015 09:32:42 pm
Thank you Annette!
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