I am working with 4th grade students and would like to gather data on their attitude toward mathematics lesson using questionnaire. Opinions are conflicting when it comes to suitability of this method to collect data with such young students.
What do you think?
A questionnaire that is administered to primary school students should be interviewed. It is called the interviewed questionnaire: you read the questions for them and you write their responses.
I imagine a key factor is trying to balance the simplicity of getting the students to understand and respond to your questions with the validity of information that you can get back from them. A simple questionnaire seems like a good approach but as Mounya advises, I would administer it yourself and record the responses. That way you can also clarify anything they don't understand.
This questionnaire (ATMI) is the most used to evaluate attitudes towards mathematics. You can adapt the instrument or use it as a complement in your research.
http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/cho25344l.htm
Stuart Cunningham Mounya Abdaoui we considered that too, but then when it comes to direct interviewing, there is that psychological factor of kids being intimidated by the interviewer and only answer the question with what they think the interviewer wants from them. Do you have any idea how to minimize that?
well, to the best of my understanding, instead of going for questionaire you should conduct an experimental design for answering a research question. In any case, experimental design are considered way more authentic and you may be able to deduce causality in your experiment result also. This way you get children more involved and an accurate estimate of your research findings. Designing the experiment will hold the key.
I agreed with all the above responses, but you can also use pair activity while you take good observations.
As of my experience with the school students, the interview questionnaire method will provide you better result as mounya said.
"Stuart Cunningham Mounya Abdaoui we considered that too, but then when it comes to direct interviewing, there is that psychological factor of kids being intimidated by the interviewer and only answer the question with what they think the interviewer wants from them. Do you have any idea how to minimize that?"
Russasmita Sri Padmi
This is a good point. Perhaps you could ask the teachers of the kids to administer the questions after you have given them some prior training and guidance on how to do this?
Thank you for the feedback everyone. I already found a questionnaire designed by Chapman for primary aged students. So far from what I can see is that questionnaire is okay as long as the questions are worded such a way that it will be easy for the students to understand.
Stuart Cunningham we were actually suggested to interview the students in groups, that is, we throw them the question and ask them to have a discussion on the answer. The discussion is then recorded. So far it works though. But questionnaire is still worth chasing due to its practicality.
Fortunately yes but the validity of the measurement will depend on the topic of interest and applicability of the questionnaire form in terms of scaling. For example; i would not use a Likert type scale.
There are lots of guides focusing on this.
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