Survey Project

Project by: Nicole Perez

Class: Honors Integrated Math II

Date: October 14, 1996

Introduction

The following project consisted of designing two biased surveys based on information from a newspaper. The surveyor made a tally sheet to observe news topics that appeared in the newspapers. After a week, the surveyor chose five topics which she believed to be the most important topics in the newspapers. One survey was designed so that the sample chose the same order of importance for the five news topics. The other survey was biased to give results showing the news topics in the opposite order of importance from the order the surveyor chose

Data Gathering and Choice of Five Most Important News Stories

I gathered my newspaper data during a 7-day period from Monday, September 30, to Sunday, October 6. All information came from "The Daily Journal." Starting on Monday I set up a tally sheet in which I wrote all news topics that appeared in the paper. There were some topics, such as "Spain to Approve Austere Budget," that I did not write because I doubted that the topic would continue throughout the week. Also I did not include any Venezuelan news topics in the tally sheet because I was mainly focusing on international news topics. Another reason I excluded Venezuelan news topics was because in every country there is an abundance of national news in the newspapers and this abundance may make national news topics seem more important or serious than they really are.

As the week progressed, I added more news topics to the tally sheet and added more tally marks to the topics on the sheet. This is my completed tally sheet:

To decide which five news topics to include in my surveys, I started out by checking which topics had the most marks by them. These were the topics with the most marks:

There were 7 topics with the most markings, so I knew I must eliminate 2 topics. I decided that for my surveys I would definitely include the four news topics with 6-12 marks. I needed one more topic so I had to choose between Colombia and Samper’s drug scandal, Suu Kyi for democracy in Burma, and Cuba and U.S. hostilities. To decide between these 3 topics, I asked myself "Which problem is more likely to escalate into a major international conflict?" The situation in Burma could cause, at the most, a civil war. Colombia and Samper’s drug scandal could worsen U.S.- Colombian relationships. The conflict between the U.S. and Cuba seems more likely to cause a major war within a short period of time. I decided that the Cuba - U.S. conflict would definitely be included within my 5 news topics. Now I had the 5 following news topics:

• Palestine and Israel crisis, summit
• U.S. election talk
• Taliban crisis in Afghanistan
• Bosnia situation
• Cuba and U.S. hostilities

Next I had to decide the order of importance of the news topics. I liked the current order but I did not believe U.S. election talks was the second most important topic. As I mentioned before, I wanted to focus on international topics and not topics that strictly relate to one country only. So I immediately put U.S. election talk in the position of least importance of the 5 topics. The order for the topics was the following:

1. Palestine and Israel crisis, summit
2. Taliban crisis in Afghanistan
3. Bosnia situation
4. Cuba and U.S. hostilities
5. U.S. election talk

Sample

After deciding the 5 most important news topics of the week, I needed to select the samples. For each of the biased surveys I was to write, I decided to survey one whole grade. In other words, the sample was a cluster sample.

For the survey in which I wanted the results to come out biased to agree with me on the five news topics of most importance, I chose to sample the 11th graders. Because many of the 29 11th graders are involved in SAMUN, they were more likely to be aware of international issues of importance. The 11th graders might be as aware of important news topics as I am and they might agree with me on my choice of important news topics.

For the survey in which I wanted the results to come out the opposite of what my opinion on important news topics was, I decided to survey the 7th graders. There are few 7th graders in SAMUN, and I remember that in 7th grade I did not care much for news around the world. Based on these 2 factors, the 31 7th graders might either guess the answers, copy someone elses’answers, or choose a topic which they have heard about often, such as Bosnia’s conflict, as the most important news topic.

The reason I did not survey my math class was because I wanted to survey a sample that was not aware of my intentions for the survey. The math class knows that one survey must show results that agree with my conclusion on the most important news topics and the other the opposite results from my conclusion, so they may just put answers that contribute to the result that I am looking for instead of answers that reflect their true feelings on the issues.

Survey

The next step of my survey project was to design the surveys. The first concern that came to my mind is how I should word the questions. I gathered all the newspapers that I had used originally to decide the five most important news topics and looked up all the articles on these topics. I wrote down their titles.

Once I had the titles of the articles it was easier for me to describe the news topics in the survey.

I started by designing the survey which was biased so that the results would agree with my conclusions on most important news topics. Here is a copy of this survey:

SURVEY

Do you mostly agree that the following news topics from last week are in order from most important to not so important?

1. Historical summit held to improve the relationship between Palestine and Israel failed to settle their violent differences.
2. Taliban guerilla leaders impose their version of Islamic law in Afghanistan and warn other nations not to interfere with their plans.
3. Bosnia’s inaugural joint presidency meeting delayed because of sharp Serb-Muslim differences; U.S. and NATO keep forces in Bosnia in case of severe conflict.
4. Cuba and U.S. hostilities; both countries exchange harsh insults at U.N. General Assembly.
5. U.S. election talks; hot competition between Dole and Clinton.

Circle your response:

	Yes, I agree					No, I don’t agree

As you can see, the sample’s answer choices are very narrow. There are only 2 possibilities--yes or no. In the wording of the main question the word mostly is underlined. This word in the question is important because if one person thinks that one of the topics should not be in the order it is but if they agree with the order of all other topics in the survey, then they do not say they disagree. The reason I put "from most important to not so important" is because all the news topics on the survey are important but some are more important than others and I wanted the sample to realize this. I also made sure to mention the time which the news topics appeared, just in case some major problem or crisis occurred the day I distribute the surveys. In the first most important news topic, I made sure to add powerful adjectives such as "historical" and "violent," which gave the topic an air of importance. In the second topic I did not include as many powerful adjectives but there were verbs that were strong enough to replace the adjectives such as "impose"and "warn". In the third topic I also used powerful words like "delayed", "severe", and "sharp". Since the fourth topic does not include words that impact the reader as strongly, it seems less important. And the last topic only has one powerful word, "hot". By consciously decreasing powerful words, I intended to decrease the importance of the topics.

For the other survey, in which the question was biased to show results opposite to the conclusions I had made on the most important news topics, I made the sample’s choices more broad by allowing them to rank the topics. Also the main question asks the sample to rank the topics in the order of importance which they think is correct. I underlined the "you". The purpose of this was to make opinions count. For example, if there is a student from Cuba in 7th grade, he may think that the topic on Cuba is most important and rank it as #1. This is an example of how nationalistic feelings can get involved. Here is a copy of this second survey:

SURVEY

Rank the following news topics in order from the news topic which you think is most important to the one you think is least important. Label them from 1 to 5, in which 1 is the most important, 2 is not as important, and so on.

______ U.S. election talks; competition between Dole and Clinton.

______ Taliban guerilla leaders apply their version of Islamic law in Afghanistan and ask other nations not to oppose their plans.

______ Cuba and U.S hostilities; both countries exchange harsh insults at U.N. General  Assembly.

______ Bosnia’s inaugural joint presidency meeting delayed because of sharp Serb-Muslim differences; U.S and NATO keep forces in Bosnia in case of 	 severe conflict.

______ Summit held to improve the relationship between Palestine and Israel failed to settle 	their differences.

Besides changing the format of the survey to show conclusions opposite from mine on the news topics, I changed the wording of the topics. Notice the change of wording from the topic I ranked number one in the first survey and the same topic in this survey:

In the 2nd survey this topic does not seem important at all.

I also changed the wording of the second most important topic in the first survey.

1st survey:	Taliban guerrilla leaders impose their version of Islamic law in Afghanistan and warn other nations not to interfere with their plans.
2nd survey:	Taliban guerrilla leaders apply their version of Islamic law in Afghanistan and ask other nations not to oppose their plans.

In the second survey it seems as though the Taliban guerrilla leaders are being very diplomatic with their version of law when they really are extremists.

I left the wording of the topics I ranked 3rd and 4th in importance in the first survey the same for the second survey. I did this so that the powerful words in these topics would make the sample feel as though these topics were the most important in the second survey. In the topic I ranked 5th of importance I left the wording the same but I eliminated the word "hot"for the second survey.

I also scrambled the position of the topics on the second survey. For example, in the first survey the Palestine and Israel topic came before all other topics because it was the most important and the U.S. election talks was last because it was least important. In the second survey, I put the U.S. election talks issue first and the Palestine and Israel issue last. The 3rd and 4th topics in the first survey switched places in the 2nd survey. I changed the order of the topics so that students who were lazy and ranked the issues 1,2, 3,4, and 5, would not select the same order of topics as I had chosen.

Distribution of Surveys

My surveys were ready for distribution on Monday, October 7. I found out who the advisors for 7th and 11th grade were and how many advisees they had. I gave each advisor the survey corresponding to his grade. The surveys were given out during homeroom in the morning. At break I collected the surveys. The reason I gave the surveys out on Monday and not any later was because if a new news topic became very important during the week, I would have to update my surveys or the results would be affected.

Results of Surveys

11th Grade Results Advisor number Yes No Total 11A 8 3 11 11B 4 6 10 11C 7 1 8 Total 19 10 29

As seen on the table, I was successful in manipulating the survey to get the desired results. If there are 30 students in each grade of the high school, then about 118 students would be in agreement with the order of importance I chose for the news topics, and 62 students would not be in agreement. The circle graph shows the number of students in the 11th grade and their answers to my survey.

Even though the results above show that more people agree than disagree with me on the choice of the important news topics, I think more people would have agreed with me if they had taken the survey seriously. Here is a survey that demonstrates the lack of seriousness put into answering this survey:

How seriously can a person who draws a stick figure on the survey be considering the survey?

Some 7th graders did not take the survey seriously either. For this reason, I could only count 23 surveys out of 31. Two students were absent so they did not take the survey. Six students did not fill in the survey correctly. Here are the 7th grade results:

News Topic	Position of order of importance	Number of students who voted for this position	Dominating position(s)
Summit (Palestine and Israel)	1 2 3 4 5	4 1 6 6 6	3,4,5
Taliban in Afghanistan	1 2 3 4 5	5 2 9 3 4	3
Bosnia	1 2 3 4 5	2 9 1 8 3	2
Cuba	1 2 3 4 5	6 7 5 4 1	2
U.S. Elections	1 2 3 4 5	6 4 2 2 9	5

As can be seen, the bias worked well in this survey to produce conclusions opposite to the conclusions I made about the 5 most important news topics. I had chosen the Israeli-- Palestine conflict as the #1 most important news, but the results of the second survey chose it as the 3rd, 4th, and 5th most important news. I chose the Taliban crisis as 2nd most important, but this sample’s results chose it as 3rd most important. I chose the situation in Bosnia as the 3rd most important, and the 7th graders chose it as the 2nd most important. I chose the situation in Cuba as the 4th most important, and the 7th graders chose it also as the 2nd most important. The only news topic that I should have created more bias in was the U.S. election topic. If I had worded it more powerfully, it might have been chosen more as the 1st most important news topic instead of as the 5th, which was the position I had also chosen for it.

Possible ways to make the surveys even more biased

One way to make the 11th grade survey more biased is instead of asking "Do you agree..." ask " Don’t you agree..."

A way to make the 7th grade survey more biased is instead of asking the 7th graders to answer the survey, ask a younger group of people such as the 3rd graders. They probably would guess the answers more than the 7th graders did. Since the 3rd graders would mostly guess, the results would turn out to be somewhat illogical. This shows how the results of a survey mostly depend on what type of people make up the sample. These are some honest ways of making a survey more biased.

Some dishonest ways of making a survey biased are by telling the sample what to put. For example in the 11th grade survey you could say: "Please put yes". But what would be the point of going through all the trouble of handing out surveys, if you could put the answers yourself to suit your interests?

Conclusion

The world is full of people who have different opinions on various subjects. Well designed, unbiased surveys serve to learn about the opinions of a certain population. The results of surveys may make it easier to find ways to satisfy the needs or demands of many people. But it is crucial for surveys with that purpose to be unbiased, because as shown in the results of both surveys in this project, opinions can be manipulated. A world in which only biased surveys were conducted could lead to the manipulation of information concerning people’s opinions and needs.