Objective:
The objective of my project with Carly is to see if there is a correlation of grammar knowledge and the age that one gets a smartphone. We are hoping to show that the earlier you get a phone then the worse your grammar is in the long run.
Design/research method:
Our research method is to do surveys. We originally had the survey on-paper and had people complete the survey in front of us. It was helpful to see their reactions but ultimately wouldn’t be the easiest way to get data in excess. We then switched the on-paper survey to an online survey. We have sentences that have mistakes and also sentences that do not. This is to help us test if they can see simple to hard grammar errors. Then we also have sentences where they were supposed to identify different parts of speech to test their knowledge.
Setting:
We started our on-paper surveys in Red Square where a lot of people usually hang out. As soon as we were in Red Square it was evident that people were in class. The few people that were out there were walking to class or there just wasn’t anyone. We then went to the Viking Union where there are generally more people eating and hanging out. When we got there we set up at a table outside. Then we started to ask people as they walked by. We found that people going into the Viking Union were more willing to take the survey than people walking out of the Viking Union simply because they were walking to class and didn’t have time.
Observations:
Our first few participants didn’t totally read all of the directions and missed a couple points that way. Another thing that I noticed was that the first few who took the survey seemed to be more confident in themselves. They felt like they knew what they were doing. As the surveying continued on that week the participants seemed less and less confident every time we asked someone. When the participant finished they would ask what they got wrong and we would tell them, and they would say “oh obviously duh” and feel bad that they missed the simple mistake. We have had a few older participants and they still made mistakes. Also, the English majors we have asked also made mistakes. We have a sentence that uses affect. Some of our participants are stumped when they get to it because they don’t know the difference between affect and effect. Since posting the survey online there has been way more responses so we have about 50 people as of now. We are hoping more will take the survey over the next week or so, so we can have as much data as possible. There have also been very few people who have actually gotten zero mistakes which I find interesting. There also currently isn’t a clear correlation between grammar and age. We aren’t really concerned about that, but we hope by the end that there will be a clear correlation.
The organization of this is very well done. I can easily follow where you are in your research. I love that on the get go people were not paying attention to directions (maybe because of technology!).
Keep up the good work!