"An informal approach would be to look at where the raw scores falls related to the total possible points of 112. If the raw score is approximately 70, the score would fall midway between the somewhat happy and somewhat upset Garfields, indicating the student has an indifferent attitude toward writing. The formal approach involves converting the raw score to a percentile rank by using Table 1. The raw score should be found on the left-hand side of the table and matched to the percentile rank in the appropriate grade-level column," (Kear, Coffman, McKenna, & Ambrosio, 2000).
Using the informal approach
(further clarification the participant labels for identification are pseudonyms, ie., Participant A, Participant C, etc.)
- Participant A (male): raw score 84- interpretation: Student is more so indifferent towards writing, but not completely indifferent towards writing. Because his score was higher than 70, this indicates that he is more positive towards writing than he is indifferent.
- Participant C (male): raw score 83- interpretation: Student is more so indifferent towards writing, but not completely indifferent towards writing. Because his score was higher than 70, this indicates that he is more positive towards writing than he is indifferent.
- Participant K (female): raw score 96- interpretation: Student does have a generally positive attitude towards writing.
- Participant L (female): raw score (information to come)
- Participant J (male): raw score 78- interpretation: Student is more so indifferent towards writing. Because his score was so close to 70, this indicates that he is indifferent towards writing.
Using the formal approach
"A class average at or above the national norm (ie., the 50th percentile rank) might indicate that this group of students has relatively positive attitudes toward writing compared with their peers. A class average below the national norm might suggest that the teacher investigate more closely the reasons for this score," (Kear, Coffman, McKenna, & Ambrosio, 2000).
- Participant A (male): percentile score 77
- Participant C (male): percentile score 75
- Participant K (female): percentile score 96
- Participant L (female): percentile score (information to come)
- Participant J (male):percentile score 60
Because all of these participants' formal percentile scores are above the national norm, this data indicates or suggests that this group of students has a relatively positive attitude towards writing.
LaShanda, I like the way you used both options to score your surveys. The Garfield survey seems like an easy option to use to gain information about students' opinions. Which option of interpretation did you prefer? They both seem to be informative. Are you planning to do any type of interviews to gain a better understanding of why students feel the way they do? Keep working hard! Looks like another snow day may be in the near future... :/
ReplyDeleteThanks! I don't really prefer one over the other, I think that they will both give me some great information and just a different way of displaying that information. Yes I am going to interview my participants and their teachers. :)
ReplyDeleteI liked that you gave the formal and informal approach for interpreting each students’ results. Sounds like the word “indifferent” came up a lot when looking at the informal results. It is always beneficial to looks at the students’ attitudes towards writing so that you know how motivated they will be to write. Hopefully all students have shown excitement to write for the school newspaper. I know as a student I would have been excited about that opportunity. I think it is interesting that the formal approach showed a relatively positive attitude towards writing when the word “indifferent” came up a lot on the informal approach.
ReplyDeleteI love the way that you interpreted your data and I think it did provide you with some great information both ways. It is nice to see that there is a spread but not a HUGE spread among most of your students. I definitely think it is a good thing that you already have a student who is "genuinely interested" in writing because that students positive outlook and excitement will hopefully help the other students to improve their attitudes as well. Are you using this survey again at the end? I would like to see the change in the students who were "indifferent".
ReplyDeleteGreat job with the survey--now let's see how the whole group looks:)
ReplyDelete