Money and time are both limited at the charter school. Jill, the director, sent out a survey of parents' perceptions of purchasing priorities for the school. She had a group of parents respond to the questionnaire as a pilot. She had them rate their priorities on a rating scale with the points "necessary", "very important", "purchase if money is available", "not necessary", "don't purchase". She was disappointed to find that the pilot parents rated everything as necessary. This will not help her make purchasing decisions. Of the following, what is the best strategy for Jill?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

By revising the instrument so parents must rank items to purchase relative to each other, Jill can get a better sense of parents' priorities and determine where to allocate limited funds. This will also force parents to make trade-offs and identify items that may not be as necessary as others. Open-response items may lead to more varied responses, but the ranking approach will provide more structured data for decision-making. Conducting in-person interviews may be time-consuming and not feasible for a larger population of parents. Sending out the survey as-is may lead to skewed results if all parents rate everything as necessary.

Money and Time Are Both Limited at the Charter School