To Read or Not to Read, That's the Question

The Study

Discussion
Here are some errors! Ew.....

Out of 150 surveys sent out, we only had 60 survey returned with fully filled out information. 24 out of 150 surveys were never returned and the remaining 66 either hadn’t taken the test yet or didn’t state how many books they read. From this, we can say that there is a non-response bias. Some of the people in the 24 students that didn’t return the survey may have gotten a lower score, so they may not want to make their scores made public. Since people with higher scores will be more inclined to be truthful, this response bias could have negatively skewed our data.

 

Another weakness may have been the wording of the survey. When we asked whether they took ACT or SAT, we gave them choices, SAT, ACT or both; there was no neither option. People may have felt compelled to arbitrarily make some thing up so as not to leave the survey blank. These made up scores would have certainly affected our results.

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• One of the confounding variables would be the intensity of the English classes they are taking. Somebody in an honors English class would have had to read more books for school assignments than someone in general. However, students’ standardized test taking abilities are not necessarily reflected in the level of class they are taking.

 

Improvements

 

• While many of our weakness cannot be controlled like the non-response bias and lying, we do feel that the wording of our survey could have been improved. We could have included a neither option and also made it clear that it is completely anonymous and confidential.

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• We could have blocked our study by the level of English class. This would be helpful in controlling for the mandatory books read each semester.

 

Extrapolation

 

We feel comfortable to extrapolate this study to the entire student body of North Olmsted High School. Since the survey was just for the students of our high school, it wouldn’t give accurate results if we compared it to other high schools with different level of English classes. Results may vary from school to school; therefore, these results cannot to be extrapolated.

 

Suggestions

 

Other studies could be conducted based on this topic. One of the confound variables was that people may have lied about their test scores. In order to prevent this in the future, a study could be conducted where the test scores are directly accessed by the researcher. Another study to do would be to survey a broader population which includes the nearby schools. This would allow the results to be extrapolated further.