Design, administer, and analyze a generation gap survey

Decide how you think generations may differ in their opinions on a particular topic. Team up with a classmate and choose two topics to study. These will be called "dependent variables" because you are stating that you believe that a person's beliefs about these topics depend on their age. The "independent variable" is what causes the differences in the dependent variables. In this case, the independent variable is the generation to which the person belongs. Choices for topics might include:

Decide exactly how you think the dependent variables will differ for the generations. This is your hypothesis. For example, if the topic is TV violence, the hypothesis might be: "Younger people think TV violence is fun and harmless, but older people think it is dangerous and harmful." If the topic is Women in the military, the hypothesis might be: "The older a person is, the more he or she will believe that women in the military should not be allowed in combat." If the topic is Friendship," this might be your hypothesis: "Young people tend to value friends more than family, but older people tend to value family more than friends."

Use Word to create a survey form similar to the one found in the Design a survey using Word article.

With your partner, create five statements for survey participants to respond to that will accurately test your hypothesis. Statements should be designed to elicit answers like "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree."

Assign numerical values for different attitudes toward your statements. For example:

Present your survey statements to the rest of the class and see if:

Decide on a minimum number of people to be surveyed.

Decide at which public place you will administer the survey (for example, at a mall, inside or outside a grocery store, at a movie theater).

Obtain the permission of your parents and the survey site owner before administering their survey.

Set up tables in the public place you have chosen.

Be sure respondents fill out the entire survey and thank them for taking the time to do so.

For each respondent, average the numerical values of their responses to the survey statements and write this "score" on the survey form.

Open a new spreadsheet in Excel.

Clarify your variables. For example, "Independent Variable: Generation"; "Dependent Variable: Political Beliefs." There should be one column for each dependent variable on your worksheet. When entering data into your worksheet, each response (completed survey) should be put in its own row, and the independent variable should go in the first column.

Note how many males/females there are, and what part of the world the respondents were born in. Even if you do not include this information in your analysis, it is important to record it, because these differences may affect your results. Make these the second and third columns.

Sort the data based on the generation group. Then, calculate the average score for each dependent variable for each group. Using Excel's filtering features, evaluate the data by showing records that match certain rules, or criteria. For example, show all records of people who were born between 1946 and 1955 from the United States that scored the highest for one of your dependent variables.

Create charts that show some trend in your data.