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Engaging Students in Survey Research Projects across Research Methods and Statistics Courses

One innovative way to help students make sense of survey research has been to create a multifaceted, collaborative assignment that promotes critical thinking, comparative analysis, self-reflection, and statistical literacy. We use a short questionnaire adapted from the Higher Education Research Institute’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s Freshman Survey. In our Research Methods course, students begin by administering the brief questionnaire to a small, nonrandom sample of students at our university. They analyze the data descriptively and compare their “results” to the national trends as part of their required course homework. These data are then quantitatively analyzed throughout all homework exercises the next semester during their statistics course. This collaborative effort bridges methods, statistics, and capstone courses, helping students connect the courses and develop a deeper understanding, awareness and appreciation of the utility of preestablished instruments for collecting primary data and for assessing the meaning of secondary data.