Smoke-Free Policy Essays

Smoke-Free Policy Essays Smoke-Free Policy Essay Smoke-Free Policy Essay Smoke-Free Policy BY allowancing The Final Report Smoke-Free Policy Purpose of the Survey and the Survey Basics The main research purpose of the survey Smoke-Free Policy was to measure the effectiveness of the smoke-free policy among the students which recently went into effect at Branch College. The questionnaire which our project team designed and administered contained twelve questions including two demographic questions about the gender and the age range of the participants. We wanted to conduct the survey which will contain clear, balanced and well-structured questions and matched espouse categories to have a better response and coverage rate on the issues of smoke-free policy on the campus. The survey was conducted by Danville Tumults, Loan Chattanooga, Marc Farewell, Army Vasquez, and Abdul Sharon. We used the Qualities System of Branch College to create and administer the survey, and the link to the survey questions have been sent over the email to the fellow classmates in PAP 3105 course. The students were allowed one week to answer the questionnaire and submit their responses. The email invitation to participate in the survey was sent on Monday May April 15, 2013, and we closed the survey in a week on Monday, April 22, 2013. Questions asked why selected? Problems with questions The construction of the questionnaire is a very important part of the survey. This is why it is required to keep the research purpose and goals in mind at each step and also determine in advance which topics must be covered, what specific questions must be asked and in which order the questions will be maintained. From the very beginning, our project team defined the issue and the purpose of the survey to measure the effectiveness of the smoke-free policy among the students which gently went into effect at Branch College. In order to get satisfying response and coverage rates, a great amount of time has been devoted to the questions which would be asked, on the pretest and revision of the questionnaire. We also focused on the complete wording of questions and a balanced set of answer choices. To keep the conversational flow and build trust with respondents, it has been determined to start first with general questions before specific ones, open-ended questions before close- ended, and also keep in mind that it is crucial to construct the questions in the allowing order awareness, opinion, behavior, and demographics. We also paid close attention to the response categories to make sure they are balanced, not exhausting, and clear enough to the respondents and matched to the question asked, and are also likely to produce variability. The questionnaire contained 12 questions in total including 2 demographic questions. As an example, the first question reflected the awareness mode of the questions order. It helped our team measure how concerned students are with the effects of cigarette smoke on their health. It has men revealed that 47% of the respondents were very concerned whereas 21% were not concerned at all. The second and third questions reflected the opinion of the respondents, such as, for example, the second question showed that 68% of students think that the number of smokers has not been decreased since the smoke free policy went into effect, and the third question also showed that 42% are still unsure auto ten JODI wanly ten security department does at mentoring ten smoke Tree policy on the campus of Branch College. And we also included two demographic questions t the end of the questionnaire to find out about the gender and age range of the respondents. We managed to be very specific and asked two separate questions in order to get precise information. It has been revealed that there were 47% of male respondents and 53% of female respondents. And as for the age category, 53% of the respondents fell under 18-21 age category, 32% under 22-26 age category and under 27-34 age category respectively. However, one of the problems we encountered while conducting the survey was related to the questions for smokers only. As an example, one of the questions revealed that there were only 9 smokers, and out of them only 22% continued to smoke where it was still disallowed, whereas 78% did not do so. Another question which has also been designed for smokers only showed that there were 16 smokers, and out of them 19% believed that the smoke- free campus policy made it harder for them to get to class on time while 81% responded it was not hard. Perhaps the reason is that either some of the smokers decided to skip the question for the smokers only, or the question itself was not important to their personal understanding of the problem. Another problem was that 4 students still did not submit their answers even after the follow-up email has been sent to remind them about the survey completion and the deadline. Data Collection Mode: Advantages and Disadvantages It is very important to design and implement the data collection mode. In order to conduct the survey Smoke-Free Policy, our team decided to use the Qualities System of Branch College to create and administer the survey. The first step we took was the creation of the survey through Quick Survey Builder which allowed us to create each question in the appropriate order as well as the response categories to cake sure they were clear, balanced and matched to the asked questions. Then our team took the next step the distribution of the survey. We uploaded the list of the respondents email addresses and their full names who we were interested in reaching out to through our survey link. The target of our interest was the students, and we kindly asked our fellow students in our Public Affairs 3105 class to complete the survey. We sent an email invitation to complete the survey online on Monday April 15, 2013. Students had one week from that day to complete the survey until it as closed on Monday April 22, 2013. Out of 23 respondents, we received a response from 19 students who answered all the questions. Through View Results tab the system allowed us to create the final report of the answers given to the questions we provided including the response rate to each question, the percentage rate and even the graph for our convenience. We could also compute the crossbars for each question using the variables age and gender we were interested in to evaluate the results properly. In terms of the advantages, this mode of data collection did not cost us any money, ND it was a very fast and easy way to collect the information, also view the responses and percentage rates and create cross-tabulations by the variables. Advanced options of the online Qualities System allowed us to modify the questions and create some colorful backgrounds and visuals to seem more eye-catchy to the respondents what also could increase the response and coverage rate. Another advantage of this data collection Moe Is ten accuracy. Since ten participants entered tenet responses directly into the Qualities System, the margin of error could be smaller. It was also say and convenient for the respondents to use this kind of the survey as they could pick the time which suited them best, and of course the time required to complete the survey was much shorter. To sum up, this survey mode is certainly less time consuming, allows flexibility, lower costs, faster results and easy construction and administration. However, some of the disadvantages are related to the coverage and sampling problems, respondent availability, and lower response rates. It has been noticed that the level of cooperation is much weaker since there is no interviewer to sky questions directly and build trust and understanding among the participants. This, in turn, could slightly affect the reliability of data. This mode of data collection can also have some technical issues and problems which could affect the results of the questionnaire as well as the final report to review the given answers. As an example, one of the technical problems could be the browser freeze, error messages, or the questionnaire can be completed by same person several times. All these problems may prevent the participants from providing the responses to the questionnaire. Sampling/Selection: Advantages and limitations. Suggestions for the future The survey sample consisted of all the fellow students in the PAP 3105 class and also the professor. 23 surveys have been sent out, and we collected the responses from 19 participants. Since we had the email address of every student in the class, it allowed us to conduct this survey as a census. One of the advantages of taking a census is that with such a small population we would need to take a survey of everyone in the population in order to get significant results. We had almost minimal limitations as we had a target group, the email address of every participant n this group and we also received the responses from almost every student who participated in the survey. However, we encountered one problem. 4 students still did not submit their answers even after the follow-up email has been sent to remind them about the survey completion and the deadline. Therefore, our census might not be representative of the entire group opinion. The results represent the opinion of the students in the class but it is unlikely we could apply their responses for a larger population such as Branch College undergraduates. As for the suggestion for the true, we could recommend to reach out to more potential participants in order to be able to generalize the results too larger population. Coverage: Who was included ? Who was excluded? Did anyone have a better/worse chance of being included ? Why [why not? The survey Smoke-free policy was targeted to the whole class of PAP 3105. It was a census of the whole class so everyone had an equally likely chance of being selected. No one had either a greater or a less chance of being included . Our project team excluded all the faculty members and students who were not in this class. Response and Non-response: Who and how many answered/did not answer the survey? Were any items skipped? Implications? As it has been mentioned above, the survey questionnaire was sent to 23 participants in the class. However, out of 23 surveys which have been sent out, we received the responses from only 19 respondents who answered all the questions. Almost all questions were answered, except of those ones which we designed specifically for the smokers such as the question #4: Does the smoke free campus policy make it harder for you to get to class on tile-e Ana ten quest # Do you continue to smoke winner It Is disallowed? This is where we encountered the problem. As an example, one of the questions revealed that there were only 9 smokers, and out of them only 22% continued to smoke where it was still disallowed, whereas 78% did not do so. Another question which has also been designed for smokers only showed that there were 16 smokers, and out of them 19% believed that the smoke-free campus policy made it harder for them to get to class on time while 81% responded it was not hard. This created a certain degree of inaccuracy as the number of smokers did not match. Perhaps the reason is that either some of the smokers decided to skip the question for the smokers only, or the question itself was not important to their personal understanding of the problem. Analysis: How was the data analyzed? This step was crucial in the process of conducting the survey as it provided our project team with the results of the questionnaire which was distributed to the students in the class. The Qualities System of Branch College allowed us to process the data we collected, analyze and sort out the data using the demographic questions gender and age range. Some of the questions were designed specifically for the smokers or non-smokers but mostly all of the questions were open to every participant in the class. We created cross tabulations of our survey based on the variables of age and gender to find out about existing patterns among male and female respondents of a certain age range. We found out that there was no consistent pattern relating to each age strut or gender what could be considered as a characteristic or a feature for a specific group of students who participated in the survey after we selected which question would be in the banner (in our case age and ender variables), and which question the stub. Findings: Frequencies and crossbars I covered the following issue questions, and therefore, my findings have been based on the information/responses we collected from the participants in the class. 1 . Question #3 How does security do at enforcing the smoke free policy? (N=19) As we can notice from this table, 5% of the respondents believe that the security department does an excellent Job at enforcing the smoke free policy; 21% think it is just good; 42% are still unsure; 26% believe it is bad; and 5% think it is terrible. Question #6 Do you believe you are still exposed to second-hand smoke on campus since the smoke free policy has gone into effect? (N=19) As we can notice from this table, 58% of the respondents think that they are still exposed to second-hand smoke on campus since the smoke-free policy has gone into effect; 32% said no; and 11% are still unsure about this issue. It was also very important to create the cross tabulations for these issue questions by the variables I selected gender Ana age range. I compared ten approval responses Tort total as well by gender and by age. I also compute the percentage rates, and it was quite interesting to see the difference in the responses when applied to specific age or gender categories. Crossbar by 2 variables: gender and age How does security do at enforcing the smoke free policy? (N=19) Crossbar by 2 variables: gender and age Do you believe you are still exposed to second-hand smoke on campus since the smoke free policy has gone into As an example, 58% of the respondents believe that they are still exposed to the second-hand smoke on campus since the smoke-free policy has gone into effect. If we kook at this problem through the findings of the crossbar, we may notice that out of 58% of the respondents who said yes, 8 participants were female (80%) and only 3 participants were male (33%). However, out of 32% (6 respondents) who believe they are no longer exposed to the second-hand smoke on campus, only 2 students were female (2%) and 4 male (44%). It was also quite interesting to observe under what age category the respondents fell. As an example, out of 11 respondents who answered yes to this question, 7 students fell under the age category 18-21; 3 dents 22-26 age category; and 1 student 27-34 age category. Summary All in all, it was very interesting to conduct and administer the survey about the smoke-free policy on the campus of Branch College. The findings of the survey which we obtained from the students helped us measure the effectiveness of the policy which has gone into effect recently and also what students think about this policy in general. As we encountered one problem 4 students did not submit their answers even after the follow-up email has been sent to remind them about the survey implosion deadline, we can conclude that our census might not be representative of the entire group opinion. The results represent the opinion of the students in the class but it is unlikely we could apply their responses for a larger population such as Branch College undergraduates. Perhaps we could recommend reaching out to more potential participants in order to be able to generalize the results to a larger population. The results we obtained were also informative and interesting, and the Qualities System of Branch College allowed us to collect and process the data and analyze the findings in a very easy and fast way. We discovered that the majority of students do not smoke in our class and are concerned about the negative effects of smoking on their health. Students believe that the smoke-free policy should include all areas of the campus. They also believe that the security department is helping increase the effectiveness of this new policy on campus of Branch College, and we strongly believe in the nearest future students who smoke will respect the ones who do not, and pay close attention to the signs where smoking is allowed and where it is not.