|
Method
Participants
The participants in this study
will be approximately 144 tenth and eleventh grade history students at Rowland
Hall St. Mark's Upper School, thus random selection is not involved. Random
assignment to control and experimental groups will be used through randomly
handing out questionnaires to the students.
Materials
Materials for this study include
two questionnaires of fifteen questions/statements each (see Appendix
A and Appendix B), one with the
wording effect and the other without, and pencils/pens for the students to fill
out the questionnaires. Each question/statement on the questionnaires will
correspond to another question/statement on the other questionnaire (except in
the cases of questions number six and seven which are the same, just simply
switched in order), i.e. each corresponding set of questions/statements will be
on the same subject matter while either the questions/statements or answers will
be worded differently. Thus the wording effect can be analyzed by comparing
answers/responses to corresponding questions/statements.
Procedure
The groups of students will be
tested in their history classes by their respective teachers so that the
students will not know that they are participating in an experiment, but rather
think that they are completing a history or social sciences survey. The teacher
will hand out the questionnaires to all students in any order, for the two
questionnaires will be shuffled before being given to each teacher for handing
out (even numbers of both surveys will be given out each teachers so that
similar numbers of surveys are completed). The teacher will be instructed to
give the students no instructions other than to simply fill out the survey to
the best of their abilities, as well as to take the survey seriously (i.e. not
simply randomly fill out answer or look at what others are putting for
responses). The teachers will collect the questionnaires when they are completed
and returned them to those conducting the study.
|