Discussion Journal #8

This week we dug into quantitative data following the evaluation topic. There are 5 P's of evaluation: participants, program, place, policies/administration and personnel. Those are incorporated into our logic models and our evaluation. A big part of evaluation is surveys. If we get the participant's and worker's feedback we will then be able to see if our program is successful and meeting our objectives. It is important to specify what you are trying to do in the survey. Are you trying to measure satisfaction, accessibility or value? Like as if we were in a science class we almost write a formula. We need a dependent variable and an independent variable. The dependent variable is what is being measured and the independent variable is what influences or predicts what is being measured. We also really focused on learning how to write a good question in relation to our surveys. There are seven important things to remember when writing questions:

1. Avoid double barreled questions
2. Be Clear and Brief
3. Avoid leading questions
4. Write in the language the respondents use
5. Avoid technical jargon
6. Avoid negative questions
7. Use precise alternatives

Since our focus has been a lot more on topics rather than emotions in class it is hard to find that personal tie of how the information makes me feel. Tying this all into our group's SEPPP it is going to be extremely important to be using our 5 P's of evaluation as well as looking at our independent and dependent variables.  After learning about writing good questions for our surveys it really showed me that we need to start asking those questions to ourselves. An example of that is "on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being worst and 5 being the best) how did you enjoy the event?" Thinking of that and other questions starts to put the thought process of how we want our event to go is important.

So taking all what we learned this week moving forward I think that really using how to write good questions will not only help our group create a good survey, but also help us start looking at the objectives we want to accomplish with our program.