Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Here is my finished survey. I am a little stuck on what questions I should ask the students about their stress levels. I tried to keep it on a teenage level to keep interest. Because of this format everythings alittle different but the 0 are check boxes and there are lines to divide the sections. I wanted to focus on academic stress since basic phsychological stress would take too much time and would be complicated to ask questions and would be too broad. Are the questions that I asked good enough to make a good assuption of the level of academic stress and categorize the students with their level of asthma? I decided to put the ALA survey on their to input their information into their system and by their standards see if their asthma is under control and categorize that into a chart depending on the stress question? Well please tell me what you think?

PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME
Some points to look over before taking this survey:
1. You have to be diagnosed asthma
2. This survey will take around 10-15 min
3. Please remember that everything on this survey is completely confidential and will only be seen by the required proctors.

1. What grade are you in?
0 9th 0 10th 0 11th 0 12th

2. How long have you had Asthma (since diagnosed by doctor)?
0 A few months 01-2 years 02-4 years 0 4-6 years 0 6 years & up

3. On a scale of 1 to 10 how persistent are your asthma attacks? (1 being less frequent, 10 most frequent)
.
4. Do you believe that stress is a trigger for your asthma attacks? 0 yes 0no

5. How many times do you have to take your rescue inhaler?
0 Daily 0weekly 0Monthly 0 Yearly

6. Unfortunately, through all of the teacher’s warnings you have waited to the last minute to study for a major exam in one of your classes. Actually, you have waited until the night before, so in that case do you believe that you would feel your chest tighten or any other asthma symptoms?
0 yes 0no

7. Let’s say you get your report and in one of your classes you have a horrible grade of 54. While thinking “Oh my gosh, how did this happen” on top of “My parents are going to kill me” do you think you would feel any asthma symptoms?
0yes 0no

8. Do you have any other diseases or health problems? 0 yes 0no
a.) If yes please list:

9. Do you have any allergies? 0 yes 0 no

10. How many sports or extracurricular activities do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 02-4 05 or more

11. Do you hold an office in any of the activities? 0 yes 0 no

12. How many clubs do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more

13. Do you hold an office in any of these clubs? 0 yes 0 no

14. How many AP classes do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more

15. On a scale of 1-10 how much do you care about your grades? ( 1 being “ Eh, academics aren’t everything” , 10 being “ I would die if I got an F”)
.
16. Do you plan on going to college? 0 Definitely 0 Nope 0 Maybe

17. What type of college?

0Ivy League and private
0Public, Ivy League
0 Public, regular

These questions are from an official survey given by the American Lung Association.
1. In the past 4 weeks, how much of the time did your asthma keep you from getting as much done at work, school or at home?
0 all the time 0 most of the time 0some of the time 0a little of the time 0none of the time

2. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you had shortness of breath?
0 more than once a day 0 once a day 03 to 6 times a week 0Once or twice a week 0Not at all
3. During the past 4 weeks, how often did your asthma symptoms (wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath, chest tightness or pain) wake you up at night or earlier than usual in the morning?
04 or more nights a week 02 or 3 nights a week 0Once a week 0once or twice 0Not at all
4. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you used your rescue inhaler or nebulizer medication (such as albuterol)?
03 or more times per day 01 or 2 times per day 02 or 3 times per week 0once a week or less
0Not at all
5. How would you rate your asthma control during the past 4 weeks?
0Not controlled at all 0Poorly controlled 0 Somewhat controlled 0Well controlled
0Completely controlled

Gizmogirl,

This looks good; you should be proud of what you've accomplished in putting this together. Here are some suggestions and comments you might consider to make this survey even better:

(1) Remember that the wording of a survey is very important; seeming minor changes in wording can have a dramatic affect on the results you obtain. As a general rule, you want your questions to be as clear and understandable as possible. Working out the wording of questions can be a tricky thing; hopefully the comments of the Experts here can help you clarify things. You might also have a parent, friend, or teacher read through the survey questions and explain to you what they mean. If what the outside person says a question means does not match what you are trying to say, the question may need to be reworded. Confusing questions can introduce strong bias into your results.

(2) Try to avoid "leading questions". This is another tricky thing related to wording. If you only provide one side of an argument when asking a question, you are leading those taking your survey to a particular response and therefore biasing your results. This is something that is difficult to detect and hard to quantify, but it is something to keep in mind. Posing clear and neutral questions is a difficult challenge, but if you take the time to think about these issues, your project will stand out the judges because most students who do surveys don't stop for even a second to think about these things.

(3) Keep in mind that the people taking your questionnaire may lie, especially since some of your questions deal with potentially sensitive personal information, as David Kallman pointed out. There's not much you can do about this, but it is something to keep in mind.

(4) Remember that no matter how good your survey is, if the sample that you have selected to take the survey is not appropriately selected, you are more likely to have bias in your results than if you used random chance to select the sample. Of course, it will probably not be totally possible for you to take a probability-based sample, but you should still keep in mind that your sampling method can introduce bias into your data. Based on the conversation in this topic, I'm not sure if you have talked about how you are going to select the people who take your survey; if you haven't, let us know so that we can help you choose a realistic method. It would be sad if after all the work you've been putting into the survey itself your results were biased because you didn't think about your sampling method.

Here are some comments on the questions themselves:

PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME
Some points to look over before taking this survey:
1. You have to be diagnosed asthma
2. This survey will take around 10-15 min
3. Please remember that everything on this survey is completely confidential and will only be seen by the required proctors.

As a general note, I would suggest that you use complete sentences in all the questions and instructions of the survey. The first question is somewhat unclear. I think you are saying that someone must have been diagnosed with asthma to participate in your survey. Is this correct? You might consider re-working the survey so that the "PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME ON THIS SURVEY" and questions 2 and 3 are all together as a heading at the top of the survey and then have question 1 as the first question of the survey. It might look something like this:

This survey will take 10-15 minutes to complete. Please do not put your name on this survey. Remember that your answers to these questions are completely confidential; no one will know what answers you put because your name is not included in the survey.
---------------------------
1. Have you been diagnosed with asthma Yes 0 No 0.

If you answered "Yes" to question 1, please continue to answer the rest of the questions on this survey. If you answered "No" to question 1, please return to survey to the proctor.
-------------------------

1. What grade are you in?
0 9th 0 10th 0 11th 0 12th

2. How long have you had Asthma (since diagnosed by doctor)?
0 A few months 01-2 years 02-4 years 0 4-6 years 0 6 years & up

3. On a scale of 1 to 10 how persistent are your asthma attacks? (1 being less frequent, 10 most frequent)
.
4. Do you believe that stress is a trigger for your asthma attacks? 0 yes 0no

5. How many times do you have to take your rescue inhaler?
0 Daily 0weekly 0Monthly 0 Yearly

These seem to be good, clear questions. As a general rule, answers to questions that ask people to recall past events (such as when they were diagnosed with asthma) are often inaccurate because people's memories are not perfect. My only two comments would be to consider rephrasing 2 to simply say "How long ago were you diagnosed with asthma?" and replaced "many times" in 5 with "often".

6. Unfortunately, through all of the teacher’s warnings you have waited to the last minute to study for a major exam in one of your classes. Actually, you have waited until the night before, so in that case do you believe that you would feel your chest tighten or any other asthma symptoms?
0 yes 0no

7. Let’s say you get your report and in one of your classes you have a horrible grade of 54. While thinking “Oh my gosh, how did this happen” on top of “My parents are going to kill me” do you think you would feel any asthma symptoms?
0yes 0no

I think that using scenarios like these are a good way of investigating how asthma may be related to potentially stressful school-related situations. The wording of 6 might be a little confusing because you are essentially saying the same thing twice. Consider combining some ideas, such as "Unfortunately, despite all of your teacher's reminders, you have waited until to night before to study for a major exam in one of your classes. Do you believe that if you were in this situation you would experience any asthma symptoms?"

8. Do you have any other diseases or health problems? 0 yes 0no
a.) If yes please list:

9. Do you have any allergies? 0 yes 0 no

The questions are clear, but I would suggest getting rid of 8a. This is getting into the territory of very personal health information. Sticking with a "yes" or "no" should suffice.

10. How many sports or extracurricular activities do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 02-4 05 or more

11. Do you hold an office in any of the activities? 0 yes 0 no

12. How many clubs do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more

13. Do you hold an office in any of these clubs? 0 yes 0 no

14. How many AP classes do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more

15. On a scale of 1-10 how much do you care about your grades? ( 1 being “ Eh, academics aren’t everything” , 10 being “ I would die if I got an F”)
.
16. Do you plan on going to college? 0 Definitely 0 Nope 0 Maybe

17. What type of college?

0Ivy League and private
0Public, Ivy League
0 Public, regular

These ones are very nice. In 11 and 13, you might consider replacing "Do you hold an office" with "Are you an officer". In 14, think about replacing "do you participate in" with "are you taking". If you ask "do you participate in", some people may think you are asking about how many AP classes they answer questions and contribute to class discussions in. In 17, I would suggest reworking the choices you have. First of all, you have completely neglected 2-year schools and community colleges, options that many students consider. Second,there are no public Ivy League schools. Consider instead simply "4-year private school", "4-year public school", "2-year or community college", and "Trade or vocational school".

These questions are from an official survey given by the American Lung Association.
1. In the past 4 weeks, how much of the time did your asthma keep you from getting as much done at work, school or at home?
0 all the time 0 most of the time 0some of the time 0a little of the time 0none of the time

2. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you had shortness of breath?
0 more than once a day 0 once a day 03 to 6 times a week 0Once or twice a week 0Not at all
3. During the past 4 weeks, how often did your asthma symptoms (wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath, chest tightness or pain) wake you up at night or earlier than usual in the morning?
04 or more nights a week 02 or 3 nights a week 0Once a week 0once or twice 0Not at all
4. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you used your rescue inhaler or nebulizer medication (such as albuterol)?
03 or more times per day 01 or 2 times per day 02 or 3 times per week 0once a week or less
0Not at all
5. How would you rate your asthma control during the past 4 weeks?
0Not controlled at all 0Poorly controlled 0 Somewhat controlled 0Well controlled
0Completely controlled

These are excellent; including such questions in your survey adds credence to it. You might consider deleting the heading that reads "These questions are from an official survey given by the American Lung Association". Seeing this might cause your respondents to believe there is some sort of inherent difference in the questions or that the other questions aren't as important. This effect could bias your results. By deleting the heading, you remove this potentially problematic effect. You know that these questions are from an ALA survey, but the people taking your survey don't necessarily need to.

I hope I haven't bogged you down in too many details! What you have accomplished really is great work; I'm nitpicking to point out things that can be improved Definitely be proud of what you have done because I can tell that you have put a huge amount of thought and effort into this survey; it is much, much better than most of the ones that I have seen done by science fair participants.

Let us know if you have questions; good luck on your project - you are doing great!

Thank you for the feedback I will revise my survey and post it back up for more critique. I am not totally sure how to choose the people to take my survey. Can you give me tips on how to choose people and keep my participants from being biased?

Here is the revised survey. There is a line after 1a where the real survey begins. Should I include any more questions to try to be more concrete when I try to analyze the students stress levels?

• This survey will take around 10-15 min.
• Please do not put your name on this survey.
• Remember that your answers to these questions are completely confidential; no will know what you put because your name is not included in the survey.

1. Have you been diagnosed with asthma? 0 Yes 0 No
1a. if you have answered yes please continue with the survey. If you have answered no, please return the survey to the proctor.


1. What grade are you in?
0 9th 0 10th 0 11th 0 12th
2. How long ago were you diagnosed with asthma?
0 A few months 01-2 years 02-4 years 0 4-6 years 0 6 years & up
3. On a scale of 1 to 10 how persistent are your asthma attacks? (1 being less frequent, 10 most frequent)
.
4. Do you believe that stress is a trigger for your asthma attacks? 0 yes 0no
5. How often do you have to take your rescue inhaler?
0 Daily 0weekly 0Monthly 0 Yearly
6. Unfortunately, despite all of your teacher’s reminders, you have waited until the night before to study for a major exam in one of your classes. Do you believe that if you were in this situation you would experience any asthma symptoms?
0 yes 0no
7. Let’s say you get your report and in one of your classes you have a horrible grade of 54. While thinking “Oh my gosh, how did this happen” on top of “My parents are going to kill me” do you think you would feel any asthma symptoms?
0yes 0no
8. Do you have any other diseases or health problems? 0 Yes 0No
9. Do you have any allergies? 0 yes 0 no
10. How many sports or extracurricular activities do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 02-4 05 or more
11. Are you an officer? 0 yes 0 no
12. How many clubs do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more
13. Are you an officer? 0 yes 0 no
14. Are you taking any AP or Dual Credit courses?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more
15. On a scale of 1-10 how much do you care about your grades? ( 1 being “ Eh, academics aren’t everything” , 10 being “ I would die if I got an F”)
.
16. Do you plan on going to college? 0 Definitely 0 Nope 0 Maybe
17. What type of college?
0 4-year private school
0 4-year public school
0 2-year or community college
0 Trade or Vocational school

1. In the past 4 weeks, how much of the time did your asthma keep you from getting as much done at work, school or at home?
0 all the time 0 most of the time 0some of the time 0a little of the time 0none of the time

2. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you had shortness of breath?
0 more than once a day 0 once a day 03 to 6 times a week 0Once or twice a week 0Not at all
3. During the past 4 weeks, how often did your asthma symptoms (wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath, chest tightness or pain) wake you up at night or earlier than usual in the morning?
04 or more nights a week 02 or 3 nights a week 0Once a week 0once or twice 0Not at all

4. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you used your rescue inhaler or nebulizer medication (such as albuterol)?
03 or more times per day 01 or 2 times per day 02 or 3 times per week 0once a week or less
0Not at all
5. How would you rate your asthma control during the past 4 weeks?
0Not controlled at all 0Poorly controlled 0 Somewhat controlled 0Well controlled
0Completely controlled

This version looks much improved! You have taken what was already good and made it better; keep up the good work! I can tell that you are putting a lot of effort into the project and that effort will pay off.

Should I include any more questions to try to be more concrete when I try to analyze the students stress levels?

That is really up to you. Do you feel that the questions you have on the survey right now provide you enough information to determine whether there is a correlation between students' stress levels and asthma attacks? If not, go ahead and develop some more questions to give you more data. Your survey is not unduly long, so I don't think adding a few more questions is not going to negatively impact the number of people who will choose to take your survey. Based on what I see in the survey as you have it currently, you could, among other things assess (1) whether or not people believe that stress is a trigger for their asthma attacks and (2) gauge how people believe their asthma symptoms would be affected by two potentially stressful situations. These factors can then be compare and evaluated in the context of several other variables, such as the duration of diagnosis, grade level, presence of other health problems, participation in extracurriculars, particpation in AP classes, etc. You certainly do not have a shortage of relationships to examine!

Keep in mind as you analyze your data you cannot prove that stress causes asthma symptoms or that participation in extracurriculars causes higher rates of emergency inhaler use, etc.; you can only show a correlation between variables. Correlation does not imply causation. This means that just because you find that two things have a relationship, that relationship is not necessarily one of cause and effect. Lurking variables are often present. This PowerPoint (www.unc.edu/~zhuz/teaching/Stat31/Notes/Lec11bb.ppt ) explains some things you should keep in mind as you analyze your data.

I am not totally sure how to choose the people to take my survey. Can you give me tips on how to choose people and keep my participants from being biased?

This is an excellent question - one that most students ignore when doing a survey-based science fair project, so kudos to you for considering how to choose your sample. The first step to take when working out how to collect your data is to define the population of interest. That is, you need to define the group that you are trying to draw conclusions about. Are you interested in the relationship between asthma symptoms and stress in high school students? Among 18-24 year old? Among the elderly? Among elementary school-aged children? The population of the entire US? Among migrant farmworkers?, etc. Do you see the point that I am trying to make? In order to decide how to choose who takes your survey, you need to first define the population you are trying to draw conclusions about. Since the people you have easy access to are high school-aged,I would suggest defining your population as "high school students". If you are only going to have people from your school participate, then you might need to refine the definition of your population to be "high school students at my high school". If you determine that your population is "high school students at X High School", the the conclusions will all refer to X High School. For example "I found strong evidence suggesting a correlation between the duration a high school student at X High School has been diagnosed with asthma and his or her belief that stress influences their asthma symptoms.This study suggests that a similar correlation may be found at among other high school students, but further research is needed to study the possibility that this same trend is found among high school students across the US." Do you see how you can suggest that a similar trend might be found in other groups similar to your population, but you cannot say for sure that the same trend is found in other groups?

I discussed some of these same issues in another message topic with a different student. That message topic is found here: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... cfb#p15420. Take a look at it and let me know if you have questions about the considerations discussed in it and how to apply those principles to your project.

Keep up the good work!

Okay this is my final draft before showing it to my teachers so please critique away!

• This survey will take around 10-15 min.
• Please do not put your name on this survey.
• Remember that your answers to these questions are completely confidential; no will know what you put because your name is not included in the survey.

1. Have you been diagnosed with asthma? 0 Yes 0 No
1a. if you have answered yes please continue with the survey. If you have answered no, please return the survey to the proctor.

1. What grade are you in?
0 9th 0 10th 0 11th 0 12th
2. How long ago were you diagnosed with asthma?
0 A few months 01-2 years 02-4 years 0 4-6 years 0 6 years & up
3. On a scale of 1 to 10 how persistent are your asthma attacks? (1 being less frequent, 10 most frequent)
.
4. Do you believe that stress is a trigger for your asthma attacks? 0 yes 0no
5. How often do you have to take your rescue inhaler?
0 Daily 0weekly 0Monthly 0 Yearly
6. Unfortunately, despite all of your teacher’s reminders, you have waited until the night before to study for a major exam in one of your classes. Do you believe that if you were in this situation you would experience any asthma symptoms?
0 yes 0no
7. Are your triggers usually allergies like cat dander, pollen or dust or are your triggers more into the lines of more natural factors like extreme cold, pollutants or even hard laughing?

.

8. Let’s say you get your report and in one of your classes you have a horrible grade of 54. While thinking “Oh my gosh, how did this happen” on top of “My parents are going to kill me” do you think you would feel any asthma symptoms?
0yes 0no
9. Do you have any other diseases or health problems? 0 Yes 0No
10. Do you have any allergies? 0 yes 0 no
11. How many sports or extracurricular activities do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 02-4 05 or more
12. Are you an officer? 0 yes 0 no
13. How many clubs do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more
14. Are you an officer? 0 yes 0 no
15. Are you taking any AP, Pre-AP or Dual Credit courses?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more
16. On a scale of 1-10 how much do you care about your grades? ( 1 being “ Eh, academics aren’t everything” , 10 being “ I would die if I got a C”)
.
17. Do you plan on going to college? 0 Definitely 0 Nope 0 Maybe
18. What type of college?
0 4-year private school
0 4-year public school
0 2-year or community college
0 Trade or Vocational school

1. In the past 4 weeks, how much of the time did your asthma keep you from getting as much done at work, school or at home?
0 all the time 0 most of the time 0some of the time 0a little of the time 0none of the time

2. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you had shortness of breath?
0 more than once a day 0 once a day 03 to 6 times a week 0Once or twice a week 0Not at all
3. During the past 4 weeks, how often did your asthma symptoms (wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath, chest tightness or pain) wake you up at night or earlier than usual in the morning?
04 or more nights a week 02 or 3 nights a week 0Once a week 0once or twice 0Not at all

4. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you used your rescue inhaler or nebulizer medication (such as albuterol)?
03 or more times per day 01 or 2 times per day 02 or 3 times per week 0once a week or less
0Not at all
5. How would you rate your asthma control during the past 4 weeks?
0Not controlled at all 0Poorly controlled 0 Somewhat controlled 0Well controlled
0Completely controlled

This looks very nice. You have put some serious effort into this and it really shows. You should be proud of what you've done! It really is exceptional for someone to focus to extensively on developing a meaningful observational study/survey project. Good work! I've put some final (and honestly rather nit-picky) comments in the text itself; they are in bold.

------------------------------------------------------------------

• This survey will take around 10-15 min.
• Please do not put your name on this survey.
• Remember that your answers to these questions are completely confidential; no will know what you put because your name is not included in the survey.

1. Have you been diagnosed with asthma? 0 Yes 0 No
1a. if you have answered yes please continue with the survey. If you have answered no, please return the survey to the proctor.

1. What grade are you in?
0 9th 0 10th 0 11th 0 12th
2. How long ago were you diagnosed with asthma?
0 A few months 01-2 years 02-4 years 0 4-6 years 0 6 years & up
3. On a scale of 1 to 10 how persistent are your asthma attacks? (1 being less frequent, 10 most frequent)
.
4. Do you believe that stress is a trigger for your asthma attacks? 0 yes 0no
5. How often do you have to take your rescue inhaler?
0 Daily 0weekly 0Monthly 0 Yearly

NOTE: I would add a small introduction to this section saying something like: "The following questions give some scenarios that might affect your asthma. Please think about them and select the most appropriate response."

6. Unfortunately, despite all of your teacher’s reminders, you have waited until the night before to study for a major exam in one of your classes. Do you believe that if you were in this situation you would experience any asthma symptoms?
0 yes 0no.

8. Let’s say you get your report and in one of your classes you have a horrible grade of 54. While thinking “Oh my gosh, how did this happen” on top of “My parents are going to kill me” do you think you would feel any asthma symptoms?
0yes 0no

7. Are your triggers usually allergies like cat dander, pollen or dust or are your triggers more into the lines of more natural factors like extreme cold, pollutants or even hard laughing? NOTE: I WOULD MOVE THIS QUESTION HERE SO THAT THE TWO SCENARIO QUESTIONS ARE TOGETHER

9. Do you have any other diseases or health problems? 0 Yes 0No
10. Do you have any allergies? 0 yes 0 no
11. How many sports or extracurricular activities do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 02-4 05 or more
NOTE: I DELETED QUESTION 12 BECAUSE IT WAS THE SAME AS QUESTION 14.
13. How many clubs do you participate in?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more
14. Are you an officer? 0 yes 0 no
15. Are you taking any AP, Pre-AP or Dual Credit courses?
0 0-1 0 1-2 0 2-4 0 5 or more
16. On a scale of 1-10 how much do you care about your grades? ( 1 being “ Eh, academics aren’t everything” , 10 being “ I would die if I got a C”)
.
17. Do you plan on going to college? 0 Definitely 0 Nope 0 Maybe
18. What type of college?
0 4-year private school
0 4-year public school
0 2-year or community college
0 Trade or Vocational school

1. In the past 4 weeks, how much of the time did your asthma keep you from getting as much done at work, school or at home?
0 all the time 0 most of the time 0some of the time 0a little of the time 0none of the time

2. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you had shortness of breath?
0 more than once a day 0 once a day 03 to 6 times a week 0Once or twice a week 0Not at all
3. During the past 4 weeks, how often did your asthma symptoms (wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath, chest tightness or pain) wake you up at night or earlier than usual in the morning?
04 or more nights a week 02 or 3 nights a week 0Once a week 0once or twice 0Not at all

4. During the past 4 weeks, how often have you used your rescue inhaler or nebulizer medication (such as albuterol)?
03 or more times per day 01 or 2 times per day 02 or 3 times per week 0once a week or less
0Not at all
5. How would you rate your asthma control during the past 4 weeks?
0Not controlled at all 0Poorly controlled 0 Somewhat controlled 0Well controlled
0Completely controlled

------------------------------------------------------

Other than those couple of comments, I think it's great! Good luck on your project; keep us updated so that we can continue to help you.