Imagine you were to create a survey that examined the frequency of drug use

Imagine you were to create a survey that examined the frequency of drug use in middle school children. Referring back to the considerations for creating surveys presented in this module and in your textbook, what specific factors would you need to consider when developing this survey? Make sure you address considerations related to age (early adolescence) and nature of the topic (drug use).

For this survey there would be many things to take into consideration with its development. I think the best choice would be a closed question questionnaire. These questionnaires are quicker to administer and they are more reliable. We would need to make sure we had the correct demographic information to ensure that we are sampling the appropriate age group. As we would be administering it to middle school students we would need to make sure to take in mental age when forming questions. The questions would need to be specific and concrete as well as easily understandable for the age group. Also memory span and interest rates are lower in middle school so we would want to ask the more important questions first to get the most reliable answers.

The children would still be underage so before the survey would be conducted it would be wise to obtain parental consent to participate. The environment in which we would administer the questionnaire would need to be evaluated too. As most people, especially teens, would not want to answer questions about drug use in front of parents or any form of authority we would need an impartial environment. It would also be best to administer the questionnaire in a group of peers and to make the sure they understand that the survey would be completely anonymous. I think this would help to achieve more honest and reliable answers.

References

Argosy University Online. (2014, January 1). Unit 3: Module 3 (Nov 13 – Nov 19). Retrieved November 14, 2014, from http://myeclassonline.com/re/DotNextLaunch.asp?courseid=10686823&userid=22842622&sessionid=2a60867157&tabid=34mZPv0CQorAyhT7Sgyq4jL8AMj8oh43tLbpC1w1RpT8CTflvAjTjnTlEsnPaoM3&sessionFirstAuthStore=true&macid=wcPPq0lx45XwmYIfAg7i3LMo8C 0JiNJChgVZCtLMB07I 2xn