Student research projects and surveys on Gransnet

Up to a point I agree (and of course they are checked and marked for choosing suitable research methods, applying them correctly and analysing the results accurately). The best ones are often very good, but not all will be.

People co-operate with them out of kindness. I complete several a year, to make up the numbers as a token 'older person' ?. If someone expects them to be of professional standard they are misguided. Students are just that - people who are studying. They are not qualified, and will make mistakes.

It is unlikely that a new graduate will be asked to design and deliver a live research project of any value, and if they go on to postgrad study they will be expected to work at a higher standard. I was a bit surprised that the one we (briefly) saw was part of a Masters, but who knows - it may have been the pilot study.

if students are doing surveys as part of their research, I expect their surveys to be competent and to have been checked and tested by a tutor or supervisor.

When they get out of university and into world of work, they will very quickly learn that the sort of slap happy work they produce in university is unacceptable elsewhere.

It is also insulting to those whose cooperation they are looking for if they are asked to fill in questionnaires that can produce no usefu, or worse inaccurate information.

I saved someone's job, by looking at the questionnaire sent out by the previous incumbent of his job, the responses to whch that he had to write a report from. I read the report, it was rubbish. I then read the questionnaire and said that given how badly drawn up the questionnaire was, no better report could be expected. He was still working his probationary period and it kept him in the job.

Open questions are more difficult to analyse, and if they are mixed with closed (ie yes/no) questions even more so.

In a large scale survey this can easily be ironed out - the software will separate the answers and they can be dealt with separately. The results may back one another up (triangulation), and if not, further research will be done.

Studies done by students on a zero budget are usually analysed using Excel or even manually. Although students have access to SPSS (powerful analytical software) many of them can't use it. I think that people often forget that their surveys are individual efforts carried out with few resources. Many of them are not professional standard, but it's not really fair to expect them to be.

Rather than mixing and matching open and closed questions, t is more likely that a student would have a final question asking if the respondent would be willing to be interviewed, or to be asked further questions in an open ended questionnaire, or even join a focus group. They could then get a representative sample form those who agreed, and take it from there.

Sago wrote I can confirm a survey has to be specific.

Can you elaborate please?

For example, are you meaning as in "online grocery shopping" rather than "online shopping"?

For example, are meaning as questions with specific answers from which to choose, rather than a text area with the question "What problems (if any) have you experienced with online grocery shopping?"

Or both, and/or something else please?

With online shopping, age has very little to do with it. The problem mentioned by Stardreamer is a problem faced by many online shoppers, regardless of age.

Single, or minimal use internet usrs, are also not limited to older people. Not every one has the ability to dance round the keyboard/ phone. Some people are just intellectually slower - and struggle.

We also had a man of about 80 who used a computer just to FaceTime his Russian “ girlfriend “, he went into far too much detail about how it had transformed his life?.

? Oh dear.

As a Market Researcher with my own MR business I can confirm a survey has to be specific.

A survey cannot ever be conducted with friends or acquaintances as there is too much bias.

The majority of my work is around household cleaning products but the most interesting work I have done is regarding internet provision and the access and ability for different demographics.

It was a huge surprise how many people owned technology but only used it for social media.
We had ladies of 70 plus who would use Facebook but never consider online shopping.

We also had a man of about 80 who used a computer just to FaceTime his Russian “ girlfriend “, he went into far too much detail about how it had transformed his life?.
He had used the local library services to teach him how to do it and had no interest in any other possible uses.

The fact that permission is required for such a survey and that a fee is payable is not that prominent.

Maybe GNHQ could do something abut that.

That would avoid deletions and might even get GNHQ more revenue.

At present, why would anyone bother returning having been deleted "for" as it is put.

Oh, I am not suggesting using anything from their survey. I am thinking of a survey designed from zero by elderly people to find out things from elderly people.

For example, online shopping.

There is something I wanted to buy from one company (some shirts) but their delivery was by a courier who would deliver at some time between 8 am and 8 pm, without any prior notification of a delivery time window at all.

So, living alone, I cannot be able to go to the window (previously, door) at every minute during those twelve hours. It is simply not possible.

So I didn't buy the shirts because although it might have worked out fine I was concerned over what might happen if the courier knocked the door and I could not respond at that time.

Yes, everyone gets conflated into age bands. Yet there are vast variations of people's circumstances.

The issue as I am, perhaps naively, thinking is that there is a balance between asking specific questions and just having one free format text area in which respondents express their needs, including needs that, as far as the respondent knows, is not presently available.

Perhaps a series of questions each with some preset answers and each having a free format text area, such that one can use either a preset, or the text area, or both.

That's absolutely true, M0nica?

I have seen so many drafts with younger age groups broken down into minute gradations (eg 18-20, 21-25, 25-30) then bigger gaps until you get to 50, then it's 50+, as though we are one homogeneous mass. I ask whether they think there is a huge difference between someone who is 19 and someone who is 20 - a birthdate could put people 3 weeks apart in age into different groups, and whether they can think of any likely differences between a 50 year old and a 90 year old.

Often this is because they know far more people in the younger age groups and can more easily find those people to answer their questions. This could explain why students turn to places like Gransnet. On the whole they don't know over 50s in an area far from home (why would they?) and it's easy to forget that, as was mentioned above, they are just learning.

I am not sure that would work.

You need to know the purpose of the survey is, how they reached the decision to research that subject and then take apart all their assumptions, especially those of young people for older people.

Their definition of age: likely to lump anyone over 60, 50 sometimes, into one basket. The belief that we are all computer numpties and technologically ignorant. that we are all retired and do not work, in fact I often think they think we never worked and so on and so on.

I wonder if we should design a survey such that the survey that we produce asks the appropriate questions to ask elderly people.

We could have a thread in which we could discuss the design of the survey and devise the questions.

It might in some way, unknown at present, lead to some improvements for elderly people.

I am in the situation of having a transcript of the post and thus have the link and can access the survey, yet I also know the Gransnet rule of not quoting a deleted post.

> Did they say they had been commissioned?

Reading it again I am not sure. It could be an outside commission to them, or it could be an outside commission to the university and they are assigned to it, or it could be two students trying to start their own business together, - it could be something else of which I have no idea.

The survey includes a statement as follows..

This research has been reviewed according to the University of Manchester URECs procedures for research involving human subjects.

Earlier it states as follows.

This research is a part of the MSc Business Analysis and Strategic Management program at the University of Manchester

Now, unless things have changed, an MSc typically involves a number of taught coursework modules and a research project, (As distinct from an MPhil, which is a research degree). So the survey could be a part of one of the coursework modules, or the research project.

Did they say they had been commissioned?

I thought it was just a fairly bog standard dissertation questionnaire, which would have been better suited to undergrad than Masters.

No undergraduate should publish a questionnaire that has not been reviewed and approved by their tutor or supervisor.

No one should have the arrogance to think that their first steps into anything, whether knitting or questionnaires are usable. I would certainly never offer, even my well practiced crafts to the outside world, My inner critic recognises that I a not good at them.

More than anything, their questionnaires should be checked. If people want us to give time and serious attention to a subject that a student wants to investigate, then the student should have the simple courtesy of offering us a product that is suitable for purpose and does not insult our intelligence.

When I worked in the field, no member of staff doing any work based study, could send out a questionnaire until 2 competent people had checked it.

MerylStreep

I believe the questions asked are skewed towards the answers the commissioning body want to see.

That is common in a lot of surveys.

My Tesco orders are always over £40 as I have a Delivery Saver Plan. Sometimes just a bit over, once ^exactly £40 and sometimes up to nearly £60, though that tends to only be if i am buying something long-lasting, for example, a large Sistema storage box.

Yet if I order a custom greetings card, it is under £5.

So the cost can vary enormously depending what it is.

Also, of the categories of purchases, there were three to five that I never buy.

Also, some categories that I consider distinct were conflated together. For example food (including dining out).

I buy food online every week. I haven't eaten in a restaurant for over twenty-five years.

StarDreamer

I wonder how many completed questionnaires they got from people on Gransnet.

I got as far as the question about average spend and gave up. I was posting to say why when the thread was pulled.

I wonder how many completed questionnaires they got from people on Gransnet.

Possibly straying off-topic, but I remember seeing part of a movie years ago where a man was a management consultant and he said it was an easy job, company directors were happy to pay him, dressed in a suit, to tell them what anybody working on the shop floor of their factory could tell them, but they weren't willing to hear it from them.

Elegran

I don't think these student questionnaires are done to actually find anything out and come to a conclusion, Monica. They are practice runs by people learning how to it, and if they are their first attempt then there is some excuse for how badly designed they are. If our first attempts at knitting or water-colours were published on an art or caft social media site they might be torn to shreds (not literally!) by more experienced people. Actually, they wouldn't, crafters and artists are usually very kind to beginners.

We can only hope that their tutors tell them all the things that GNers do, and that they use their failures to improve the next time.

That is true of undergraduate ones, Elegran, but (as someone who has spent more time than I care to remember supervising and marking dissertations) I would expect a higher standard from a Masters dissertation, which is what this one was.

Student dissertations aren't commissioned - they are on topics that the students come up with themselves, and are sometimes not very feasible. They are taught how to do research, and are guided through the process, but in the end they do their own thing, and I suspect that on the whole it will be the weaker ones we see on here. For one thing, they can't take for granted anything about us as respondents, so the results are unlikely to be conclusive, and for another they are often badly designed. I don't mind trying to help though - even the weaker ones deserve a chance.

I believe the questions asked are skewed towards the answers the commissioning body want to see.

I don't think these student questionnaires are done to actually find anything out and come to a conclusion, Monica. They are practice runs by people learning how to it, and if they are their first attempt then there is some excuse for how badly designed they are. If our first attempts at knitting or water-colours were published on an art or caft social media site they might be torn to shreds (not literally!) by more experienced people. Actually, they wouldn't, crafters and artists are usually very kind to beginners.

We can only hope that their tutors tell them all the things that GNers do, and that they use their failures to improve the next time.

I did post to say that OP needed consent from GNHQ for her questionnaire.

I find any questionnaire emenating from a university is both badly designed, and if aimed at older people, misguided and based on unsupportable assumptions.

When I worked in market research, I specialised in questionnaire design and these student questionnaires are generally so bad, I want to weep.

Yes, you make some very valid comments about the questions, Doodledog.

With surveys generally they never seem to ask the questions that would give a good idea of my views.

Sort of like using Google street view and wantibg to go down some side road and they haven't gone down there with the camera.

I wonder if Gransnet could have surveys that start with a few core questions on a topic then Gransnet readers add questions to the survey as it goes along.