Goals
•Students will be introduced to the process of creating a hypothesis and testing its validity.
•Students will become familiar with spreadsheet fundamentals.
•Students will engage in thoughtful discussion about the livability of a place.
Objectives
•Students formulate a hypothesis about peoples’ feelings of what qualities make a place livable.
•Students design (using Office Excel), write, and administer a questionnaire; gaining responses to questions about geographic livability factors.
•Students analyze the survey results using Office Excel.
•Students present their findings to the class using Office Excel or Office PowerPoint.
Lesson procedure
Introduction
Do you think it’s nice to live in a place that has four seasons? Live near a river or lake? Be surrounded by farmland or apartment buildings and businesses? Have security against natural disasters like flooding, hurricanes, tornados, or earthquakes?
Do you think these things factor into decisions people make when choosing a place to live? Should they?
Do people consider geographic factors when choosing where to live, or is this just an assumption we make?
You are going to find out the answer to this question by researching the differences in peoples’ attitudes the way social scientists do. Working in teams, you will first develop a hypothesis that you believe reflects the choices people make in regards to where they live. Next, you will design, write, and administer a questionnaire to test the class hypothesis. Your survey will compare attitudes and opinions about certain factors that may affect someone’s choice. You will chart your findings, analyze your results using Office Excel, and report the results to your classmates using Office PowerPoint or Excel.
Main activity
Student handout A includes Steps 1 & 2.
Student handout B includes Steps 3-5.
Conclusion
Assess the students on:
•Formulation of their hypothesis
•Design of survey
•Administration of survey
•Analysis of survey results
•Final Office Excel or Office PowerPoint presentation.
Materials needed
· Student handouts A & B
· Computer Lab Access
Design, manage, and analyze a “livability” survey
Student guide A
In this activity, you are going to work as a social scientist. The question we want to answer once we're done with this activity is "Do geographic issues factor into someone's choice about where they would like to live?" You and your group will design questions for our survey, give the survey to adult friends and family, and then analyze and present your research findings.
Step 1
Use a survey to gauge opinions and test a hypothesis
The class has already narrowed down the list of topics that will be included in our geographic livability survey. It is designed to discover peoples’ opinions about what features make one place more desirable to live than another. You will include the topics below in your survey:
- · elevation
- · latitude
- · natural vegetation
- · land use
- · convenient access to a water source
- · climate
- · average temperature
- · potential for natural disaster
- · average annual rainfall
Decide what questions you will ask to reveal peoples’ feelings regarding each topic. For example, if the topic is elevation, you may choose to ask a question to learn what elevation level your subjects would choose to live at (i.e., “Given the choice, I would live at _________ elevation, and then give them a range of choices.). Or you could write a question simply to see if elevation seems to be an important factor for them at all (Elevation is a factor that is important to consider when choosing a place to live—then give choices like strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree). Depending on the topic, you will probably ask one of these two styles of questions. You will need to use your prior knowledge about these topics to help you write the questions.
Step 2
Create a survey and test it
Use Office Excel to create a survey form similar to the one found in the Livability Unit file folder on our computer network.
With your team, create 10 statements and/or questions for survey participants to respond to that will accurately test your hypothesis. For questions, the respondents must have multiple choices. Statements should be designed to elicit answers like "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree," or to choose one of multiple choices given in the question.
Assign numerical values for different attitudes toward your statements. For example:
5 Strongly agree
4 Agree
3 Neutral
2 Disagree
1 Strongly disagree
Design, manage, and analyze a “livability” survey
Student guide B
Step 3 Administer the survey to a specific number of respondents
Before this activity, the class decided that the minimum number of people to be surveyed by each member of the group is four. This should give us over 100 responses per question.
You can ask any adults you know to complete the survey (parents, extended family, teachers, administrators, family friends.)
Be sure respondents fill out the entire survey and thank them for taking the time to do so.
Step 4Analyze your survey data
Open a new spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.
For each of the topics listed in step one there should be one column on your worksheet. Please make sure the column topics are listed in the same order they were asked in the survey. When entering data into your worksheet, each response (completed survey) should be put in its own row, and the numerical value your group assigned to each question's response should go in the topic column that matches the question number on the survey.
A. Select all the cells in the database, and, on the Insert tab, click Table. Select My table has headers, and then click OK. Office Excel 2007 turns your data into a table. Now you can click the arrows in the header row to sort or filter the table.
B. Use a formula to analyze the data
- Click an empty cell next to the table.
- In the formula bar, type:
=countif( - Select the data in the first column of the table, excluding the field name, and then type:
,"1")
The formula will look like this:
=COUNTIF(A2:A21,"1") - Press ENTER. The cell displays the results of the formula—a number showing how many 1s are in the column, or, in other words, the number of people who like vanilla ice cream best.
- Repeat these steps to add formulas for the rest of the questions and choices.
Create charts that show trends in your data.
Step 5Present your research findings
Create a presentation to show your team's survey and results to the class. Your team can:
· Present your research findings on the computer using Office Excel to show your graphs.
—or--
· Create a presentation in Office PowerPoint to demonstrate your findings with graphics, art, animations, and graphs.