Modern Blanket Toss: Findings and Observations

2015 FINDINGS
PRE/POST STUDENT SURVEY
Survey Development
The Pre/Post Student Survey was designed to measure levels and changes in the
student’s
1) content knowledge and science practices (objective 1.a);
2) leadership and communication skills (objective 1.b);
3) attitude towards science (objective 1.c);
Reliability
The items in the survey combine to make 6 constructs or scales. To measure the
reliability of our scales, we calculated Crohbach’s alpha coefficient for each scale
using SPSS. Cronbach's alpha is a measure of internal consistency among items
included in a scale 1 . A Cronbach’s alpha that is greater than 0.7 is considered
evidence that the items included measure an underlying construct 2 . For all of
our scales there was a high rate of internal consistency among the survey items.
However, our small sample size (n=32) may bias the results 3 . Results of the
reliability analysis are summarized below in Table 11.
4) STEM career interest (objective 1.d); and
5) engagement and excitement in project topics (objective 3.b).
The survey included 5 open-ended questions and 58 Likert-scale items. The presurvey
was administered to students on paper in their first week of the Upward
Bound Academy. The post survey was administered on the last day of classes at
the Academy. A copy of the survey is in Appendix A.
Sample
Seventeen students completed the pre-survey and fifteen of those students also
completed the post-survey in 2015. Respondents identified themselves with a
name or an ID number on the surveys so that pre and post data can be
matched by individuals. All responses are valid for use in the reliability tests on
the scales, only matched pairs are included when comparing pre and post values.
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