Questionnaire Results

I asked a question about whether they were male or female because I knew there were going to be patterns and differences given in their answers. This would help later as we could orientate certain articles and designs for the magazine. I had attempted to question an even number of males and females, unfortunately I was instructed to hand out 15 questionnaires meaning one gender would have 1 over. The graph is misleading as it seems to show far fewer females, but if you look closely there was only 1 less female. This gave me a fair enough survey to compare the results.

This means that I have an near even amount of males and females so that my results are not influenced toward a certain gender. It is a feasible question because I’ve tried to ask an even number of both males and females. My results are valid because nobody lied about their gender, I watched them as they completed it.

I asked a question about age because I wanted to find out the spread of ages within college. Because it is a tight age spread in the college there would not be much effort into gearing articles toward a certain age, its more for filtering and analysis purposes. The majority of my participants were 17 years old, the most likely reason for this is that both Year 12 and Year 13 has 17 year old students, being a common figure. I have a small number of either end of that, nobody I interviewed was 19, though there are a small number of 19 year olds within the college.

This means that I have a clear majority and I may include less articles geared toward 18 year olds. I may avoid articles to do with clubbing or drinking because only a small percentage of the college can partake in those activities, maybe 6 months down the line when many of the year 13s become 18 years old. I am unsure about whether people were entirely honest about their age as it is difficult to tell.

I asked this question as I wanted to find whether there were more pupils in the first or 2nd year. I Here, quite evidently larger number pupils were in year 13. As somebody having to approach people and asking them to fill in a questionnaire it is extremely difficult to see who is in what year. And because so many people refused to do the questionnaire I had to take whoever would participate. This means that the validity may be questionable, this I will discuss now.

The validity is in serious doubt for this question. After the first year at college, 40% of students drop out, meaning there are fewer students in the 2nd year. Furthermore this questionnaire took place during year-13 lunchtime. Once my questions were completed; this was the only slot I could grasp. It is common knowledge there are far more year 12s in college, to further invalidate my question, is the following: The 40% who drop are not from the start of the college term, it is from the end, so this does not even consider attrition throughout the first year in college. This attrition takes place mostly just before the Christmas period as people who climbed the disciplinary ladder are held and interviewed by the board at this time. So my first waves haven’t even dropped out, and there are monumental numbers when it comes to year 12s. I would not even consider this question research, and if I wasn’t asked to do a question on year groups I would never have done it.

I asked the question of ethnicities as we wanted to see whether people of a certain ethnicity favoured certain stories. I found that there was no clear difference, I noticed a spread across the board. However, if one was to test this a much larger sample would be in order, as this is by no means representative of the college, or of ethnic minorities.

Being that the ethnic majority of the country, area and college are White Brits it was likely for most of my participants to be of that ethnicity. From the people I asked to participate, only Asians agreed to it, thus you see the ethnicities above. The college has an ethnic minority intake of 30%, and I was close with the number of ethnic minority students I questioned.

This makes no difference to my product, other than the knowledge that there are no preferences for people of ethnic minorities. The question itself was feasible because the need to cater to everyone’s needs is essential. The results from this were valid, I had included a wide variety of ethnicities in the questionnaire and no one had difficulty with it.

This was an important question to ask, had there been many pupils I could orientate more articles toward coping with education and work, job opportunities, enterprise and further work related articles.

The vast majority of students here said that they had no work outside of college. This was expected as early on, the college encourage students not to partake in part time work simply because of the demands of being at a sixth form. Also by this point in the year pupils who already had a job may have quit due to the workload placed on them by the sixth form.

This now means I will not be placing articles such as coping with education and work, job opportunities, enterprise and further work related articles. It was a feasible question, there are many students who work, and if you find that in a certain establishment that many do, it is essential to cater towards that. The test is valid, I set out to measure a certain aspect of student life and I received a resounding significant answer which will help my cause.

We asked a question about the proposed names for the magazine, we gave the audience 4 to choose from, in the hope they would decide which would be best for our magazine. Giving the audience a vote was necessary as they are going to be reading this magazine.

Closely contested battles between the first 3 proposed names, meaning those 3 are still up for discussion. There were various reasons as to why people chose those 3, for the sixth page people said that it links to colleges, and that it implies sixth forms. Also it has a sharp-chic style name, which people can recognise. The Purple page took the lead, however the reasons for, were not too convincing, people thought that it was humorous and that it had an alliteration, mostly idle reasons. Student Hub was joint 2nd and for good reason, people liked the way it sounded, and the way it rolled off the tongue. People made referenced to areas of learning such as learning hubs, also a hub is inviting, and it gives the organisation purpose.

This means that I must look at further discussing the 3 more successful ideas with my group, because we all put a different combination forward to our audience, we have to take an objective measurement. The question was very feasible, if not essential. Although the group may have a clear idea of what we want our title to be, we need to know what the audience want, after all they are the ones who are going to be reading this magazine.

The results are not valid; Here I have noticed that statistics can mislead people into thinking one idea should be carried forward and not the other. When asking about the proposed title, although people chose The Purple Page I am not convinced that it should be carried forward. Simply because people found it humorous and I will not have my magazine to be something of a joke to audiences. The Sixth Page was popular in joint second and had more response because people related the title to a sixth form college. Student Hub was the other in the tie and that too gained a lively response, people related the hub to learning. I will support the latter two in further discussion with my team.

We thought to include a question about sports, which could possible be included in the parent zone too. Given it was football/rugby season we thought we should include an article about that. Our cricket team is the most successful in terms of title wins in the entire west midlands/Warwickshire area, with 7 title wins in 12 years. Last year was embarrassing as we lost first round, so an article about the rebuilding process may be of interest.

Being that Football is the most popular sport in this country and that it’s currently Football/Rugby season it came as no surprise that people were more interested in this article. People simply gave reasons such as football is more popular, people can relate to it because of the current season. However when it came to cricket people were more enthusiastic in their response, people were saying that the sport is more exciting, and that the new season is up and coming so it will build excitement. One participant even plays the sport and would like to read an article about it. Reasons often show more than quantitative responses, which often add an extra dimension to result analysis.

This means that the mixed reviews may even mean the sports section is not included, that may be partly down to the fact that other articles are in such high demand being festive season is just around the corner. This also means feasibility is low, not only because of reviews, but access to sports teachers, gaining interviews, fixtures and results may be difficult.

Results too are invalid; the time of year combined with lack of enthusiasm may mean this question is not coming into fruition. It was a question that needed to asked as sports plays a big role in society but it is not of great interest to some students.

Hard News is what drives the world, every movement that shifts the earth, whether it be economical, political, military, natural disaster or crime it is hard news. This is why we should have at least on hard news article within the magazine. I asked people which title looked more appealing in an attempt to see what will sell more.

A tie between the first two answers; these were ‘harder’ stories because people’s lives were involved and that you can imagine such stories on local news channels and newspapers. I suspected people did not take this seriously however, as they wrote ‘it was funny’ and ‘very funny’ in reason boxes for the first one. This weakened my support for putting this article simply because people were not taking it seriously. However this reaction may work in favour of the publisher, often crazy titles and headlines captivate and audience, and it fact people may be more inclined to read about this. For the lives being saved people felt it was more positive and reassuring about the public services used to help and protect civilians.

I may be encouraged to use both articles, they are both worthy and the enigmatic response I gained only strengthens my desire to include them. This means I will have two hard news stories and that I have popular demand for the article. It is a very feasible question, given the impact that hard news has on people and I have found two worthy articles.

The results are very valid, people gave valid reasons for why they wanted either article, and thought it took me time to realise, I have to great articles that I can publish.

Feature articles are placed in the magazine and serve as light hearted entertainment for readers. Topics such as community on goings, music, and films are all included. I asked a question about it because we were including one ourselves. We had two that were Christmas based, and one aimed at student life, and one feel-good story.

Another closely contested battle, this time between two Christmas articles. I feel that because its Christmas season and that these two articles are closely related to that, many people felt this would be a better read. Also that they are positive articles and people generally felt happy talking about Christmas.

The two most popular answers were the lights and the markets, I feel that as these two go into discussion, due to high demand we may produce both these articles. It was a very feasible question, these articles are all on Solihull news and we can create our own articles based on them.The results are valid, given that people were honest with responses, they too elaborated on them and I fell given the season we have two great articles.

I asked a question about which college event deserved a story, most people sided with AIDS day. Although Arabian Nights and the Christmas Concert have both been advertised very well within the college people felt that something as strong as AIDS awareness should have its article. Those who went with those two productions did note that they were large college productions and that they were advertised well. However major diseases that claim millions of lives a year will always dominate articles and features, simply because of the devastation caused.

The Strong Christmas theme ran throughout the whole questionnaire but failed when it came to the final question. People feel more strongly about diseases than holidays, and that’s a reassuring step toward humanity more than anything; and that in itself encompasses the Christmas spirit.

These results were valid, this is because people were giving honest responses, they were in the know about all the productions within college and they showed where their interests lay.

Conclusion

Overall I felt the major negative of this primary research had to be validity, areas such as sample size, and a non-representative samples. This means we cannot simply extrapolate some of those results onto the whole college. I say they were non representative because I took a small chunk of students, had I interviewed say half the college I would have a much better representation.

A point I picked up on is that no one can guarantee that the people I questioned weren’t too questioned by a teammate of mine. Meaning we would be asking the same thing to the same people, limiting variety and opinion. If they were too similar it may reach the extent where the completions of some of these questionnaires were pointless. I believe that we should have split and had people write names, as then we would make sure nobody was answering more than one questionnaire.

The addition of qualitative data really put a spin on things, and made me realise not to go on stats alone. I say this because I would look at a graph and come up with one conclusion, but then when I say the reasons for, I would be discouraged or I would look elsewhere.

But given all the factors the questionnaire gave us many ideas and now helped us to decide which stories we should be using for our magazine.