What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

30
Methodology
Table 2.2 Breakdown of sample by ethnic group (%)
Ethnic group
Percentage
White 73.3
British, English, Welsh, Scottish
67.0
or Northern Irish
Irish 1.1
Gypsy or Irish Traveller 0.6
Any other white category 4.6
Asian / Asian British 12.9
Indian 2.3
Pakistani 6.4
Bangladeshi 2.1
Chinese 0.4
Any other Asian background 1.7
Black / African / Caribbean / Black British 6.4
African 2.5
Caribbean 1.2
British 2.2
Any other Black / African / Caribbean
0.5
background
Mixed / multiple ethnic groups 5.8
White and Black Caribbean 1.9
White and Black African 0.8
White and Asian 1.6
Any other Mixed / Multiple ethnic
1.5
background
Other ethnic group 1.6
Arab 0.9
Any other 0.7
birthplace. Poland, Pakistan and India were the most
frequently cited countries (accounting for 1 per cent,
0.7 per cent and 0.4 per cent of the total sample,
respectively). As shown in Figure 2.2, nearly 45 per
cent of the sample reported that their family did not
belong to any religious group and, of those who did
identify their religious group(s), Christian was the
most frequently identified, followed by Muslim.
The breakdown of the students by ethnic group
is shown in Table 2.2. The majority of participants
were White and the second largest ethnic group
was Asian / Asian British. 6.4 per cent of students
identified themselves as Black, African, Caribbean
or Black British, 5.8 per cent of students were from
Mixed / Multiple ethnic group categories, and 1.6
per cent reported that they belonged to another
ethnic group. In 2013, when our sampling frame was
developed, 25.3 per cent of students registered to
attend secondary school in England were classified
as being of minority ethnic origin (DfE, 2014), and so
the sample was broadly representative of the national
picture in 2013/14.
How was the survey introduced
to students?
For both the online and paper versions of the
survey, the researcher introduced his/herself to
the class and explained how to complete the
survey. The researcher told the students that their
participation was voluntary, that they could miss
out any questions they did not want to answer, and
that their responses would be anonymous and kept
confidential. Students were asked to complete the
survey individually and not to discuss their answers
with their classmates until after everyone had finished.
Students worked through the questions at their
own pace and asked the researcher for help if they
did not understand anything. Due to the nature of
the survey, researchers could not give students the
answers to questions (students were told to make
a guess if they did not know the answer). However,
researchers could clarify the instructions for how to
complete the survey questions, and assist students
with reading the questions and/or response options.
How was the survey data analysed?
Data from the paper surveys was entered manually
into a database created in IBM SPSS. The online
data was uploaded from Survey Monkey and
transferred into the database. Analyses of the
data included the following.
■■
For the knowledge-based questions, we looked
at the frequency with which students gave each
answer, and determined how many students
responded correctly to each question. We also
looked at their incorrect answers to explore
the nature of students’ misconceptions about
the Holocaust.
■■
For the attitudinal scales, we conducted
the reliability analyses (performed the PCA
and calculated the Cronbach’s alpha),
described above.
■■
For the knowledge-based questions and
attitudinal scales, we calculated total scores,
as described above. This meant that we had an
overall score for students’ performance on the
knowledge-based questions. It also meant we
had a score that represented students’ overall
attitude towards learning about the Holocaust.