Attitudinal Surveys
What is an Attitudinal Survey?
While attitudinal surveys may take many forms and address a range of issues, they
typically consist of a series of statements that students are asked to express their agreement
or disagreement (using a scale.)
Why use an Attitudinal Survey?
This type of survey provides valuable information on student perceptions of their
classroom experience. This includes general attitudes toward the course, the discipline,
and their own learning. The results from this survey can also help you identify elements in
your course which best support student learning.
What is involved?
Instructor Preparation Time: Very little time is needed to use a valid, existing
survey. Large amounts of time are required to develop
a survey that is reliable and measures what is intended.
Preparing Your Students: No training is required, but a description of the
survey's goals and scales should be read to students as
well as included in the survey form itself.
Class Time: Varies with length, but rarely more than 20 minutes.
Disciplines: Appropriate for all.
Class Size: Appropriate for all.
Special Classroom/Technical Requirements: None, although an optical scanning device may be
useful to read and analyze data in large classes.
Individual or Group Involvement: Typically individual.
Analyzing Results: Depends very much on class size and length of the
survey. In large classes, the use of scanning forms
and optical readers makes the task easier.
Other Things to Consider: To insure meaningful results, student responses must
be guaranteed anonymity.
These surveys can be given pre and post to measure
gains over a course or to provide mid-course
corrections to classroom teaching methods.
Demographic data may be included in the survey so
that correlation with gender, major, or ethnicity can be
made.
