Week 5: Distributing My Survey
Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog! This week, I’ve been working on distributing my survey, and I’d like to share how the process has been going.
As I mentioned in my first post, my sample consists of music students, specifically college students, high school students, and private lesson students.
For the college students, I distributed my survey through my on-site advisor Dr. Sawyer, who is the Assistant Director of Bands at the University of Kansas School of Music. She shared it with her students, and so far, I’ve received 12 responses. But she plans to distribute it to more students, so I hope to get more.
For the high school students, the process was more challenging than I initially expected. When I started my project, I planned to display a QR code for BASIS Phoenix band and orchestra students to scan and complete the survey. However, after going through the IRB approval process, I realized that I need signed consent forms from all participants before they can take the survey, and for students under 18, I also need parental consent, to ensure that all participants (or their guardians) fully understand the study before agreeing to participate. Collecting consent from college students was easier, as they could sign the forms themselves when taking the survey.
After talking with my advisor and orchestra teacher Mr. Stewart, I came up with an efficient way to collect consent and distribute the survey. I decided to hand out consent forms to students, allowing them to provide their signatures, their parents’ signatures, and their email addresses. Once completed, I asked them to return the forms to their teachers, Mr. Bushee or Mr. Stewart, who will then give them back to me. From there, I will use the collected email addresses to send out the survey.
So far, I’ve distributed 50 consent forms to students in my orchestra class (I decided to include 8th graders, since they make up a majority of our class) and members of the Tri-M Music Honor Society, which includes both band and orchestra students. Now, I just have to wait for the forms to be returned, so I can email them my survey. I do anticipate some challenges in getting responses, as some students might forget to get their parents’ signatures. However, I’m hopeful that a good number of them will participate, and I plan to distribute it to other classes or send out reminders if I am not getting a sufficient amount of responses.
For the private lesson students, I asked my piano teacher to distribute the survey to her students. So far, I’ve received a few responses, but I’m hoping for more. Interestingly, while reviewing college students’ responses, I realized that most of them also take private lessons. I hadn’t initially thought that there would be such a big overlap, as I planned to compare different demographics. However, since they represent different age groups, I’ll still be able to conduct comparisons.
Overall, distributing my survey has been a fun experience. In the coming weeks, once I get a lot more responses, I’ll analyze them and share results. Thank you so much for reading, and stay tuned for more updates!
Comments:
All viewpoints are welcome but profane, threatening, disrespectful, or harassing comments will not be tolerated and are subject to moderation up to, and including, full deletion.