Money and time are both tight at the charter school. Jill, the director, sent out a survey to get 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?
A) Send it out as it is. The larger general population of parents will have more variance than the small pilot.
B) Revise the instrument to include open-response items to get richer data.
C) Revise the instrument so parents must rank items to purchase relative to each other.
D) Conduct in-person interviews with the same items.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

By revising the instrument so parents must rank items to purchase relative to each other, Jill will be able to get a better understanding of the parents' priorities and make more informed purchasing decisions. This method will allow for more differentiation between priorities and avoid the "necessary" ratings across the board. Open-response items, while useful, may be time-consuming to analyze, and in-person interviews may not be feasible, given the tight time and money constraints. Sending out the survey as is may not yield useful results.

Money and Time Are Both Tight at the Charter School