Survey accounts

ESL 5301 002
Survey stories

Survey Story

Data collection took place in the cafeteria at the first floor of Rawls College of Business, the process went in a smooth way, although some respondents were reluctant to answer paper surveys, but they were more encouraged to respond to an online version via a cell phone. Some respondents did not know about the bakers' case, and a smaller number did not know about Kim Davis; however, religious people in general were more knowledgeable about these cases; I had to brief those who did not know about the bakers or Kim Davis cases about the stories so that they could answer the questions related to them. (Muhammad)

 
Survey Story

I obtained most of my surveys in Jerry S. Rawls College of Business and the rest of the surveys in the College of Human Science. Most of the people were friendly and filled out the surveys. Some others were struggling with their homework or preparing for their quizzes or exams. I left my survey respondents after I provided them with the surveys and came back to collect the surveys in about 10 minutes. A female respondent expressed her concern about the campus gun carry issue to me. She was surprised that campus gun carry would be allowed beginning next year. I got surveys from six females and six males easily, but I found that one of the surveys was filled out by an international student and another respondent only filled out one page of the survey and left the other page blank. As a result, I had to ask one more business student to fill out the last blank survey I had and requested more blank surveys from Mr. Leverett in the class on Thursday. The rest of the surveys were distributed and collected in the College of Human Science. (Ruizhi)

                  I had two main concerns on my mind, first, to find people from different departments and second, to ask people who were not in a hurry and therefore, would focus on the questions. In order to fulfill these criteria, I thought of two places on campus where most of the students from different departments could be, library and Student Union Building (SUB). I did not want to distract people who were studying; therefore, I went to the library’s cafeteria and asked some students who were drinking their coffee to fill out the survey for me. Almost all of them willingly agreed to fill out the form and they did that patiently and thoughtfully. Then I went to Starbucks at the SUB and asked two young women to do the survey. They first asked about its subject and when I explained that it was about Campus Carry, they said, “Oh, it is scary.” However, they filled out the survey and I noticed that they got really excited about some questions and even discussed them with each other. The idea that their friends could carry weapon was frightening for them. Moreover, I got a little bit surprised to see that most of the people were willing to participate in the survey and some of them even appreciated me for asking them to fill out the form. (Soraya Honarparvar)

Story of Our Survey

                  We, the participants of an English class, have tried to do a research on campus carry at Texas Tech University. This was quite an interesting topic for all of us, hence we decided to put together our conclusion based on statistics; because in this way, we could actually learn about people`s perceptions and use them to back up our hypotheses. After preparing the survey sheet containing many questions, which by the way were chosen from all the suggested questions designed by Professor Leverett and students, all of us tried to find at least 12 people to conduct the survey. I myself was interested in asking people mostly in engineering fields to find out what students with educational background similar to mine would think. When I was conducting the survey, I was looking for people who did not seem to be busy; because the last thing I wanted to encounter was to be blamed for bothering people. Most of them responded very politely; even I was appreciated a few times because of my efforts to gather these data. However that was not the case for every time I asked them. In one case, a guy about 22-23 years old refused to fill out the survey and said “I`ll be alright”. In another case the guy actually agreed to fill out the survey in a very good manner, but when I came back to collect the paper, I saw that he has crumpled the paper! Apparently, he got mad about the questions or the topic or something else that I do not know of. In another case, one of the female participants said she was really excited about this law. She further added that she carries a gun in her bag everywhere except on campus because she is not allowed to. One of my very first participants was confused about the smoking question. I explained to him about the hypothesis behind this one, but he did not agree anyway. In another case, I asked two of chemical engineering staff and they got really excited about this survey. They discussed this issue a little bit and addressed the fact that they are going to be really nervous to work in an area with possible armed angry students!

                  As a whole, I believe this survey can help us greatly to reach to a conclusion close to reality. I was treated very well while I was doing my job and I am truly grateful to be around nice people at Texas Tech University, even the ones who are not like-minded and like to see more guns on campus! (Sina)

Story of Collecting the Survey

I have not done a survey before and it is totally a new experience for me. I was worried because I did not know how American students would respond to this request. I decided to go to the library because I could find many students from different majors and different age groups. When I was in the library, I noticed that students were very busy with their study. Therefore, I decided not to interrupt them, and I went to the Student Union. I went to the food court where most students were eating. Because I know that food makes people relaxed, especially after they are hungry, I waited until some students were almost done with their food. As a result, students were very nice with me and answered the survey without any question except one student who said that she was not interested in this topic. From my experience, the Student Union is the best place to conduct a survey because students usually go there in their free time, so they would not mind to help and answer questions. (Ebtehal)

Survey Collection Story

                  Last week I distributed the surveys. After the ESL class, I went to the library in the Art building. I gave one survey to a graduate student who sat next to me when I was in library. Later I brought some to a class I was a teaching assistant for. There were six girls in the class, so I collected five surveys from them. The next day, I collected four surveys from four male students in my sound design class. I got the last two surveys from my Thursday philosophy class. All of the students I approached were friendly. When they learned it was about campus carry, they felt pretty comfortable to do the surveys. No one asked questions, except one art graduate student. He asked what it was for, and what kind of class I was in. He told me he was a veteran. He said he would not carry a gun, and he’d prefer to be killed by somebody rather than shooting someone. (Xiaomiao Wang)

Survey experience

 I am a teaching assistant for Thermodynamics 2 in the Chemical Engineering department this semester, and I am in charge of two back-to-back discussion classes on Wednesdays. These two classes are from 10 am to 10:50 am and 11 am to 12 pm. The first class finished early around 10:45 am, and some of the students from the next class actually came early and sat in the classroom. While I was waiting for the rest of the students to show up, I decided to ask them to fill out the survey for me. They didn’t seem to be excited about filling out the form, but they all did it nonetheless. I think they felt compelled to fill out the form, although I told them to feel free and leave the form in case they didn’t want to fill out the form. (Pouria)

Survey Story

14 people participated in the survey including me. All surveys were conducted in the Texas Tech library. There were 6 American males, and 6 American females, 1 international male and 1 international female in my survey. The survey went very well and the participants were nice to me. I asked 16 people in total and only two refused my request. During the survey, they did the survey silently and did not ask me any questions or make any comments. The average time they did the survey was appropriately 3-5 minutes and participants did not criticize any questions in the questionnaire. (Lu )

Story about my survey

I was very interested when I conducted my survey but I had two situations that upset me.  I did my survey at the tutoring center and I found a woman who works there.  When I asked her to fill out the survey, her answer shocked me because she was very rude.  She said, “Yes, I work here but I will not fill out the survey for you.” I thanked her and I continued the rest of my survey.  I also got help from another employee who was good to me but at the same time I felt he was not happy to help me.  He said to me, “I can help you but we don’t want you to ask other students because they will feel it is part of the learning center and they will not want to fill out the survey for you.”  (Samah)