Kids' bizz
Please read the general guidelines first!
Objective
Explore the relationships between smoking, drinking, pocket money and parental marital status.Materials
- Pencil and paper for developing the questionnaires.
- About 20 to 40 photocopies of the questionnaire.
Methods
- Develop a four question (one page) questionnaire addressing the following issues:
- How much pocket money do you get each week (nil, $5 or less, more than $5)
- Did you smoke any cigarettes last week (yes, no)
- Did you drink any alcohol last week (yes, no)
- Do your parents live together (yes, no)
- Photocopy the questionnaire.
- Ask 20 to 40 kids in the playground to fill in the questionnaire. Try to get a good range of kids, not just your friends.
Analysis
- Tally the questionnaire results into the following two way tables:
- pocket money against cigarettes
- pocket money against alcohol
- parents against cigarettes
- parents against alcohol
- Work out row (or column) percentages for each table
- Compare the two rows (or columns) of percentages. Differences between rows indicate relationships between the measurements. For example, if 20% of kids with more than $5 pocket money smoked but only 10% of kids with less pocket money smoked, then there is a relationship between pocket money and smoking.
Discussion
- Is there any sampling bias in your study? (Did you get a good mix of kids? Did any kids refuse to do the survey? How many?)
- Is there any measurement bias in your study? (Do you think the kids were telling the truth? Are there any questions which some kids did not answer?)
- What relationships have you found in your data?
- Do you think these relationships might be true for all kids? Or just those at your school? Or just those who filled in your survey?
- What would you do to improve the experiment the next time you ran it?