Foundation degree computing – statistical methods

In order to design the questionnaire as a group we had to combine our thoughts and develop a questionnaire that would maximise the proportion of subjects answering the questionnaire, and obtain accurate relevant information. We decided to include questions that would prompt a response from the subject in a closed and open manner. Short simple sentences were used to minimise the subjects’ confusion, we avoided negative questions where possible. We designed questions to minimise bias and we did decided to include some questions that have a grading value from 1-5.

The question regarding the most important issues we allowed multiple answers to this as the subjects usually had more than one issue at the forefront of their concern e. g. 1 subject could want Education and Health and Law and Order on their priority list. We also included a question at the end of the survey to allow the subject to share any other views that they thought pertinent to the upcoming General Election. Once we had gathered our questions we compiled a draft questionnaire using Microsoft Excel.

We chose Excel instead of Microsoft Word to compile the questionnaire, as it is easier to combine and assess the data extrapolated from the questionnaires. The draft was run through twice to check for validity of the questions and their relevance to the topic of the questionnaire. When we were happy with the layout of the questionnaire, we proceeded to stage two, collecting the data. Collecting the Data After combining questions and producing our questionnaire, we went our separate ways to gather the data from our subjects.

We each had 10 questionnaires, which had 14 questions on it. The ideal scenario being to capture data from a cross section of the population to include as many different age ranges as possible to maximise the proportion. We visited various locations around the town and carried out the questionnaire, most of the subjects were happy to answer the questions, and only a small percentage of subjects were unable to supply us with the information we were looking for. Combining the Data

Once all the data had been gathered it was decided that one member of the group should collate the data from all the questionnaires, and using a blank questionnaire and the Tally system we calculated the amounts for each response to each question. When the Tally was complete we proceeded to enter the information into the Excel spreadsheet and work out the percentages for the responses to questions. 30% of the Population thought that Labour would win the next election in the Taunton Constituency, while 17. 5% didn’t know and thought Liberal Democrat would win.

12. 5% thought Conservative would win, and 7. 5% thought UK Independence would win. 15% refused to answer. Population Parameters The parameters that we had, when we were making the questionnaire, were what kind of people that we are going to ask them. When we had to work out the limits we had was that the amount that we needed to know was the minimum and maximum total of people that we were going to ask for the questionnaire to be filled out sufficiently. We thought that a minimum of 36 an maximum of 44 so we thought that the best idea was to split the amount of the two and went with 40 as it was the median of the two numbers.