STATISTICS & RESEARCH METHODS II
Open-ended responses were vague
As many of the responses were brief and lacked substantial elaboration, we could not extrapolate very conclusive themes about how Service-Learning impacted their personal growth and civic responsibility.
​
​
How to avoid this in future
To prevent participants from giving vague responses, our survey could be more precise in its phrasing of open-ended questions.
For instance, instead of asking,
“Do you want to volunteer? Why or why not?”
​
we could ask a more precise question like,
“Has your motivation to volunteer changed after participating in this Service-Learning project? If so, describe how your experience impacted your motivation.”
​
The latter prompts participants to elaborate more and relate back to their Service-Learning experience, giving us more qualitative data to support our study.
Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data
Our study uses a mixed methods design that employs the use of both qualitative and quantitative data. Both play an integral role in ensuring the completeness of the information gathered, so there is no “superior type” of data as each perform an important function.
​
Quantitative data expresses information in numerical terms, which can be measured using statistical analyses. Our study used the Civic Action scale, which was used to quantify participants’ willingness to contribute to society by assigning them a numerical score.
Although quantifying in numerical terms makes for conveniently measurable analyses, it does not account for some of the participants’ subjective experiences. The use of qualitative questions in our study’s survey allowed participants to express their opinions and perspectives.