In-Class, Oct. 5: Online Survey for Data Collection

ONLINE SURVEY to gather data pool:

Today, we are setting the foundation stone for our Unit 2 Essay: a research essay using your own collected data, and incorporating evidence supporting your thesis statement from secondary literature.

Our background will be Chapter 7 in our textbook.
Homework for Wednesday is to read Chapter 7 (it's about "evidence").

Each student needs 3 external sources for evidence from which you'll cite in APA or MLA style (we'll review how to do this in class).

Your evidence may solely come from peer-reviewed research articles you found at research data bases, such as JSTOR, ERIC, and Google Scholar.

Hint: JSTOR requires a password if you try to access it from off-campus. Therefore, log into Morris Library first with your DAWG tag number, and then go to JSTOR and search for your topic. If you are on-campus, you can go to www.jstor.org and simply search the database.

We are going to write this big essay in separate workshops in class, and you will finish up the different components as homework. If you miss classes, you have to check on the blog what we did during the workshop, and make up for it at home. We are going to work with deadlines, and if you miss them you won't get your survey answers in time to analyze and report them.

Purpose of surveys:

We are going to do opinion surveys, attitude surveys, or perception surveys with the general public, or special audiences you might choose (e.g., students; but NO SIU FACULTY!!!), in order to collect data that deal with our research essay topics.

If we only related what our 3 external sources say about our topic, we would write a REVIEW essay; however, we are going to do a real RESEARCH essay, that means we collect our own data about people's opinions, and THEN we'll use external sources to compare our findings with theirs (either affirm, or contradict, or expand).

Topics:

You are free to choose ANY topic you like!!! :-)
However, you must be able to find 3 research articles about your topic.

You can also choose topics from this list:

1. Do shocking images in anti-drug campaigns help prevent teenage drug abuse? like these ;-(
2. Does texting make students' grammar and writing worse?
3. Does the moral life of politicians influence voters' behavior?
4. Should ENG290 be offered as online course?
5. Does high school prepare students well enough for college essay writing?
6. Should art be aesthetic or political?
7. Should abortion be a decision of the mother-to-be?
8. Should euthanasia be legalized in the U.S.?
9. Should the attendance policy in college be abandoned?
10. Should cannabis for self-consumption be legalized in the U.S.?
11. Should the drinking age in the U.S. be lowered from 21 to 18?
.... etc.

HERE is a sample survey that students in 2008 have done as a group project on the topic of Genetics & Enhancement.

HERE is an example of a research essay as one of your 3 required external sources. It would be for a survey (research paper) about cosmetic surgery. It's called: "Cosmetic Surgery: Beauty as a Commodity," and was written by Debra Gimlin in 2000, and published in Qualitative Sociology 23 (1).

Today, you will pick a topic you are interested in, and we will put your topic on this blog next to your name. It will later be hyperlinked to your survey.

What we do in class today (workshop):

1) Choose a topic
2) Find 1 research article online about topic (the other 2 are homework for next Monday). Email this article as an attachment to yourself. You need to print it out at home, and to submit it to me with your final essay (can have annotations and underlining).
3) Begin to create survey. We'll continue in another class workshop.


For creating your online survey, you need to log into your email account to retrieve the log-in and password I sent you. Then, go to this website: http://www.surveymonkey.com/, and log in as a member.

Create a new survey, and give it a title according to this model:
firstname_lastname_topic, such as: christina_voss_anti-drug_campaign
Choose a background color, and begin typing your questions (we'll model that in class).

You don't need to SAVE your survey; surveymonkey automatically saves while you are typing, so you can simply log out in the end and continue later.

Rules:
1. You need a minimum of 20 questions (a maximum of 24; no more!)
2. The first four questions must be demographic (age, gender, race, provenance, years of experience, income, level of education, GPA, etc.)
3. You must have at least 2 matrices, and 2 open-ended text boxes. Vary your other questions' layout (vertical, horizontal, one choice, multiple choices, etc.).

Your topics:

1. Adkins, Lila: Should Abortion be the Decision of the Mother-to-Be?
2. Bassett, Alexander: Should the Drinking Age be lowered to 18 in the U.S.?
3. Butler, Courtney: Does Creativity affect Conscientiousness?
4. Carpenter, Scott: Should Abortion be the Decision of the Mother-to-Be?
5. Coleman, Wister: Cigarettes for Minors?
6. Doran, Kyle: Does Texting Make Students' Grammar/Writing Worse?
7. Dunn, Mercedes: AIDS Disease in Children
8. Goeke, Brandon: Attendance Policy in College?
9. Guy, Michele: Women In Combat Roles
10. Hayano, Ian: Gender Roles & the Media
11. Jacquot, Julianne: Alcohol Marketing Affects on Youth
12. Krones, Cameron: Should it be Legal to Carry a Firearm in Illinois?
13. Lass, Carl: Recreation Majors Survey
14. Lindsey, Korey: Should Cannabis be Legalized in the U.S.?
15. Scheil, Patrick: Should marijuana be legalized?
16. Sheehan, Clayton: Should the Drinking Age be Lowered to 18 in the U.S.?
17. Strieker, Courtney: Do Graphic Campaigns Impact Teen Drug Abuse?
18. Weichselbaum, Christopher: Attendance Policy in College
19. Westerlin, Mitchell: Should Texting/Talking on a Cell Phone While Driving be Illegal?
20. Russell, Anita: Death Penalty for Adults and Minors?
21. Shubert, Michael: