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Secondary activities
Creating your own survey – activity
Curriculum links
Maths: Levels 4–5
Background
Running a survey is an essential part of developing understanding in statistics for students. This could be done as a group activity, with the whole class collecting the data and then small groups working on their own analysis and presentation of the results.
However there are some pitfalls, some of which are presented in the activity.
Privacy: While the information may seem innocuous, it is important that students’ privacy is protected. A discussion about this, and the reasons why the class needs to come up with a collection method that preserves confidentiality, is worthwhile.
Time frame: Students need to decide what data to collect. They need to know the estimated length of absences from school and the reason (illness or injury).
They need to decide whether to collect data by incident, within a time frame (eg the time and reason for each absence in a year), or by student. It is probably more useful to collect data by incident. This is more likely to produce a useful amount of data. It is also important for students to think about the units they will use for the absence and whether they will use the raw data or percentages for their results.
Usefulness: Anonymous data collection is a prime opportunity for some students to give inventive answers. A discussion on cleaning the data is a good idea. Students need to think about judging whether an unusual answer is valid or a joke.
Analysis: The survey is designed to collect numerical data which can be analysed using box plots or composite bar graphs to give a comparison. Students should also do some calculations to support their answers.
Presentation: The point of the analysis is to make a presentation of the results to answer the question. Students need to decide the best way of doing this. Getting them to write a report could be a worthwhile exercise.
Additional resources
Table 1 – Work-related Injuries Resulting in ACC claims 2000–2001 (raw data).
Table 2 and Graph 2 – Work-related Injuries Resulting in ACC claims by industry and sex 2001.
Table 3 and Graph 3 – Work-related Injuries Resulting in ACC claims by industry and sex 2001 (Percentage).
For more information about the Problem, Plan, Data, Analysis, Conclusion (PPDAC) cycle visit Census@school website by clicking on the following link:
http://www.censusatschool.org.nz/resources/statistical-investigation/
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