Karns City students survey classmates to sample opinions
KARNS CITY — Karns City students are learning how to ask probing questions and how to handle the answers.
Students in sociology and statistics classes at the junior- senior high school are surveying fellow students and the public for projects aimed at teaching them how to gather, analyze, interpret and present information.
The questions they seek to answer through the survey range from timely topics like guns and social media to asking students about their math grades and if they think superheroes are modern mythology.
Surveys that juniors and seniors in Connie Kilcoin's statistics classes conduct are similar to exit polls.
“That's what the kids are doing — taking a small sample and making inferences about the population,” Kilcoin said.
Each student or team of students selects two questions, which must be approved by Principal Ed Conto and Kilcoin, to ask students. One must be categorical and the other must be a quantitative question.
One student's categorical question is: Would you consider current superheroes to a modern mythology? (Mythology being the stories of Hercules, Achilles and polytheistic gods like Zeus)
The multiple choice answers are: Yes — stories only; Yes — gods and stories: No — not at all.
The quantitative question is: How many gods and superheroes do you know of?
Another categorical question is: What math class are you in?
The quantitative question is: What grade do you have?
Other questions ask students if they agree with the dress code and how many have jobs.
The questions will be distributed in a couple weeks to the sample students, which can be the entire student body or certain grades.
Answers are analyzed and the inferences are presented in class verbally with media presentation.
“It all culminates when they have to do an oral presentation for the class,” Kilcoin said.
The surveys carry a lot of weight serving as final tests.
“We do it as our final exam. It pulls together all the topics we talked about during the year,” she said.Students and the public can participate in T.J. McFarland's senior sociology class surveys, which are conducted online using the district website.“We'd like to have more than just teenage perspective. That's why we put them on the Web,” McFarland said.Student teams created 10 questions from one of the 40 topics approved by the administration. Clicking on one of the topic opens 10 questions on the website. Friday was the last day to participate in the surveys.Each teams analyzes the responses and use that data, not their opinions, to answer their questions, McFarland said.The goal of the project is to let students “see what a sociologist does. And hope it creates a real world connection,” McFarland said.Students submit written reports, which comprise a big part of their grades, he said.Brandon Hesidence's team's topic is: Are guns good or detrimental to society?Some of their questions ask for opinions on gun ownership, gun violence, assault rifles, self-protection and gun purchasing.The team selected it because they hunt and the topic is timely.“We're all pretty knowledgeable,” Hesidence said. “We try not to put our bias into the questions.”Mason Nolan's team topic is: What motivates teens to be involved in extracurricular activities?A member of the Gremlins football and track teams, Nolan said the other member of his team is also an athlete.Their questions seek opinions on how much offseason time they spend training for school sports, why they play sports, will they continue playing in college, pressures faced in their sports and the impact sports has on grades.“What motivates people to do sports?” Nolan said. “Do they train out of season? Do they play for fun or competition? We tried to avoid bias in our questions. It's interesting to see other people's opinions.”
