Evaluation of Results
My next step is to evaluate the questionnaire and responses, so assess the validity and reliability etc. of it to see if what can be drawn from this analysis of it can be of use in my EPQ and then after this finalise the definition of greatness which is suggested by the responses to this questionnaire.
The Sample
My sample was all the students who were completing an EPQ within the Sixth Form College Farnborough, the link to my questionnaire was placed on a shared Google Doc with lots of others and people used this to gain access to it. This meant my target sample was EPQ students from the Sixth Form College Farnborough in their second year studying for their A2 exams aged 17-18. On one hand this can be considered a representative sample because, presumably, the diversity of the interests of the people who responded to the questionnaire would have been quite significant. Completing EPQs are people interested in science, sport, medicine etc. which would therefore suggest there would be a variety of minds interpreting greatness and can therefore be generalised to a greater population for this reason especially as the size of my target sample was around 250 which is a large sample and therefore would suggest a high degree of generalizability making my results more useful because of this. On the other hand it can be considered that it is not a representative sample because my target population was all are EPQ students from the same college, this suggests that it may only be the interpretation of one single age group or even one college and not be representative to all age groups or all colleges in every country especially as it is culturally locked to England as it is an ethnocentric sample which makes my questionnaire less generalizable and therefore less useful.
My questionnaire can also be criticised in terms of sample because of the low response rate, only 29 people out of the original c.250 responded making it a response rate of around 11.6%. The SnapSurveys blog written by Susan E. Wyse writes that questionnaires need a 95% confidence rate and +/-5% margin for error which would work out for 132 responses for a population of 200 (66% response rate). It can therefore be concluded that my response rate was too small to produce any degree of generalizability or confidence in my results, significantly weakening the usefulness of my questionnaire. Although because over 10% of the target population replied it shouldn’t be abandoned completely because it contains 29 people’s opinions which remain of use to me in terms of my dissertation and EPQ but not as much trust should be put in it.
My questionnaire can therefore be criticised for not being representative of a wider population in terms of response rate and the nature of the target population, this would decrease the usefulness of it because opinions on greatness wouldn’t be the same everywhere so I cannot conclude from my questionnaire one single definition of greatness that would be considered correct everywhere. Although I can still use the opinions and answers given as a source of inspiration for defining greatness so it remains useful to an extent.
Validity of the Results
Validity refers to how accurate the data is, obviously for a subjective term this appears less relevant but the fact that the method used to gather opinion is self-report suggests that direct access is being gained into people’s thoughts on this topic which is more valid than any inferences being made. Validity also refers to whether the questionnaire is measuring what it is supposed to, I am happy that my questionnaire is valid in this fashion because all of my questions relate to greatness - most of them use this word of a synonym.
Furthermore my questionnaire can also be considered high in validity due to the good level of concurrent validity between questions (agreement), for instance all of the questions suggest that to be great you need to have achieved significant things selflessly, throughout all of the questions the focus of the answers was mainly on what in today’s society would be considered ‘positive’ attributes such as selflessness which is a word repeated throughout the open questions. An example of this in particular is the high level of accordance between question 1 (asking what makes a person great) and question 8 (asking what doesn’t make a person great) with the general trend of answers being that a great person must achieve things selflessly for the good of others similarly to question 8 where for a person not to be considered great the predominant answer was that they must selfishly cause suffering. In this case the results of this questionnaire can be considered valid because the questions agree with each other suggesting a high degree of accuracy.
On the other hand my questionnaire may be low in validity because as it is self-report there is a high possibility of demand characteristics, where a participant is impacted by the questionnaire to respond in a way not typical of themselves. The responses give evidence for this, for instance one response to question 4 is Alexander the Great and the reason given in question 5 is “because your project is on him ;)” which suggests that if this person had not known what my project had been on they may have given a different answer demonstrating a lack of validity. Low validity in this case therefore makes my questionnaire less useful because it may not be an accurate representation of what people really think which would make it difficult to use as evidence for a definition of greatness.
Overall I believe that the majority of my questionnaire can be considered valid due to the face validity of it, the title of the questionnaire is “What is it to be great” and the questions, and therefore the answers, are all addressed to this. It is just a few responses which can definitely be disregarded as invalid so overall I believe that my questionnaire, although not perfect, can be considered valid enough to not to disregarded completely and therefore remains useful when determining what it is to be great.
Reliability of the Results
Reliability refers to how consistent data is and how replicable it is. My questionnaire is highly replicable because I could just send the exact questionnaire out to the same people to see if I get the same results, this increases the reliability of my questionnaire. On the other hand my sample which I have already demonstrated as unrepresentative, and my small response rate, suggests that there will be a low degree of consistency within my results because there was not enough data gathered to really justify saying that it is consistent. The fact that there is a strong argument for my questionnaire not being replicable suggests that my questionnaire isn’t that useful when considering greatness because it may not be reliable research, however the fact that it is so replicable - a google doc survey - means that this is easy to check therefore increasing the reliability and usefulness of it because it is so easy to check.
Anachronisms
When I was looking over and analysing the results to my dissertation one problem with it which occurred to me was the fact that Alexander the Great lived in the 300s BCE whilst we live in 2014 AD and therefore we have very different values and what might be considered great now may be very different to what it was to be great in Alexander’s time and the years after during which his epithet was coined. I am therefore concerned about the high level of anachronisms within my questionnaire which would decrease its usefulness when considering Alexander’s greatness and greatness as a concept them because the views given wouldn’t be relevant to that time and whilst modern views are important when considering Alexander’s greatness it is important not to foist modern values upon him because that would not be valid.
Anachronisms are when modern values are enforced upon another time and this includes views on greatness, for instance the overwhelming consensus from my questionnaire was that to be great is to, in its simplest form, is to be good whereas in the ancient world this might be very different. Alexander’s context is very different to our own so I need to be careful when considering whether or not he deserves his epithet using the views expressed in this questionnaire because they are not representative of his time and this decreases the usefulness of my questionnaire and the responses to it.
Usefulness
Overall I believe that my questionnaire is useful because it is reliable and valid to an extent and the response rate is above 10% which while very poor and not representative has given me 29 opinions on greatness which is better than nothing. However it is not completely useful because the limitations in validity and reliability mean that I cannot trust the responses completely and the problems with anachronisms means that I have to be very careful when considering the responses, especially because of the strong argument for how unrepresentative my questionnaire is. To conclude I can use this questionnaire as a basis of research for considering what it is to be great but I shouldn’t, for the reasons discussed, place all of my trust in it.
What I Would Improve
Due to the difficulties I had with gathering a large sample to improve my questionnaire, or if I was to do it again, I would send it to even more people. Perhaps rather than just the EPQ students send it to all of the members of my Sixth Form, or even post it publicly on the internet of Facebook or something so either a greater response rate which would ensure greater generalizability and reliability could be gathered making it more useful or it will increase the consistency of data and therefore the reliability of my original data. In short if I was to do this questionnaire again I would want a more diverse sample of greater size, I would repeat it for consistency and to increase validity hide the purpose of my questionnaire by not writing the title of it in the word document where the EPQ students accessed it from. Unfortunately as I have no way of being able to perform this in the past anachronisms as a problem would be nigh on impossible to solve.
My aim for this questionnaire was to be able to answer the question ‘what is it to be great’ and however modern the values expressed are I have achieved this, see analysis and am therefore happy with the result.
My next step is to evaluate the questionnaire and responses, so assess the validity and reliability etc. of it to see if what can be drawn from this analysis of it can be of use in my EPQ and then after this finalise the definition of greatness which is suggested by the responses to this questionnaire.
The Sample
My sample was all the students who were completing an EPQ within the Sixth Form College Farnborough, the link to my questionnaire was placed on a shared Google Doc with lots of others and people used this to gain access to it. This meant my target sample was EPQ students from the Sixth Form College Farnborough in their second year studying for their A2 exams aged 17-18. On one hand this can be considered a representative sample because, presumably, the diversity of the interests of the people who responded to the questionnaire would have been quite significant. Completing EPQs are people interested in science, sport, medicine etc. which would therefore suggest there would be a variety of minds interpreting greatness and can therefore be generalised to a greater population for this reason especially as the size of my target sample was around 250 which is a large sample and therefore would suggest a high degree of generalizability making my results more useful because of this. On the other hand it can be considered that it is not a representative sample because my target population was all are EPQ students from the same college, this suggests that it may only be the interpretation of one single age group or even one college and not be representative to all age groups or all colleges in every country especially as it is culturally locked to England as it is an ethnocentric sample which makes my questionnaire less generalizable and therefore less useful.
My questionnaire can also be criticised in terms of sample because of the low response rate, only 29 people out of the original c.250 responded making it a response rate of around 11.6%. The SnapSurveys blog written by Susan E. Wyse writes that questionnaires need a 95% confidence rate and +/-5% margin for error which would work out for 132 responses for a population of 200 (66% response rate). It can therefore be concluded that my response rate was too small to produce any degree of generalizability or confidence in my results, significantly weakening the usefulness of my questionnaire. Although because over 10% of the target population replied it shouldn’t be abandoned completely because it contains 29 people’s opinions which remain of use to me in terms of my dissertation and EPQ but not as much trust should be put in it.
My questionnaire can therefore be criticised for not being representative of a wider population in terms of response rate and the nature of the target population, this would decrease the usefulness of it because opinions on greatness wouldn’t be the same everywhere so I cannot conclude from my questionnaire one single definition of greatness that would be considered correct everywhere. Although I can still use the opinions and answers given as a source of inspiration for defining greatness so it remains useful to an extent.
Validity of the Results
Validity refers to how accurate the data is, obviously for a subjective term this appears less relevant but the fact that the method used to gather opinion is self-report suggests that direct access is being gained into people’s thoughts on this topic which is more valid than any inferences being made. Validity also refers to whether the questionnaire is measuring what it is supposed to, I am happy that my questionnaire is valid in this fashion because all of my questions relate to greatness - most of them use this word of a synonym.
Furthermore my questionnaire can also be considered high in validity due to the good level of concurrent validity between questions (agreement), for instance all of the questions suggest that to be great you need to have achieved significant things selflessly, throughout all of the questions the focus of the answers was mainly on what in today’s society would be considered ‘positive’ attributes such as selflessness which is a word repeated throughout the open questions. An example of this in particular is the high level of accordance between question 1 (asking what makes a person great) and question 8 (asking what doesn’t make a person great) with the general trend of answers being that a great person must achieve things selflessly for the good of others similarly to question 8 where for a person not to be considered great the predominant answer was that they must selfishly cause suffering. In this case the results of this questionnaire can be considered valid because the questions agree with each other suggesting a high degree of accuracy.
On the other hand my questionnaire may be low in validity because as it is self-report there is a high possibility of demand characteristics, where a participant is impacted by the questionnaire to respond in a way not typical of themselves. The responses give evidence for this, for instance one response to question 4 is Alexander the Great and the reason given in question 5 is “because your project is on him ;)” which suggests that if this person had not known what my project had been on they may have given a different answer demonstrating a lack of validity. Low validity in this case therefore makes my questionnaire less useful because it may not be an accurate representation of what people really think which would make it difficult to use as evidence for a definition of greatness.
Overall I believe that the majority of my questionnaire can be considered valid due to the face validity of it, the title of the questionnaire is “What is it to be great” and the questions, and therefore the answers, are all addressed to this. It is just a few responses which can definitely be disregarded as invalid so overall I believe that my questionnaire, although not perfect, can be considered valid enough to not to disregarded completely and therefore remains useful when determining what it is to be great.
Reliability of the Results
Reliability refers to how consistent data is and how replicable it is. My questionnaire is highly replicable because I could just send the exact questionnaire out to the same people to see if I get the same results, this increases the reliability of my questionnaire. On the other hand my sample which I have already demonstrated as unrepresentative, and my small response rate, suggests that there will be a low degree of consistency within my results because there was not enough data gathered to really justify saying that it is consistent. The fact that there is a strong argument for my questionnaire not being replicable suggests that my questionnaire isn’t that useful when considering greatness because it may not be reliable research, however the fact that it is so replicable - a google doc survey - means that this is easy to check therefore increasing the reliability and usefulness of it because it is so easy to check.
Anachronisms
When I was looking over and analysing the results to my dissertation one problem with it which occurred to me was the fact that Alexander the Great lived in the 300s BCE whilst we live in 2014 AD and therefore we have very different values and what might be considered great now may be very different to what it was to be great in Alexander’s time and the years after during which his epithet was coined. I am therefore concerned about the high level of anachronisms within my questionnaire which would decrease its usefulness when considering Alexander’s greatness and greatness as a concept them because the views given wouldn’t be relevant to that time and whilst modern views are important when considering Alexander’s greatness it is important not to foist modern values upon him because that would not be valid.
Anachronisms are when modern values are enforced upon another time and this includes views on greatness, for instance the overwhelming consensus from my questionnaire was that to be great is to, in its simplest form, is to be good whereas in the ancient world this might be very different. Alexander’s context is very different to our own so I need to be careful when considering whether or not he deserves his epithet using the views expressed in this questionnaire because they are not representative of his time and this decreases the usefulness of my questionnaire and the responses to it.
Usefulness
Overall I believe that my questionnaire is useful because it is reliable and valid to an extent and the response rate is above 10% which while very poor and not representative has given me 29 opinions on greatness which is better than nothing. However it is not completely useful because the limitations in validity and reliability mean that I cannot trust the responses completely and the problems with anachronisms means that I have to be very careful when considering the responses, especially because of the strong argument for how unrepresentative my questionnaire is. To conclude I can use this questionnaire as a basis of research for considering what it is to be great but I shouldn’t, for the reasons discussed, place all of my trust in it.
What I Would Improve
Due to the difficulties I had with gathering a large sample to improve my questionnaire, or if I was to do it again, I would send it to even more people. Perhaps rather than just the EPQ students send it to all of the members of my Sixth Form, or even post it publicly on the internet of Facebook or something so either a greater response rate which would ensure greater generalizability and reliability could be gathered making it more useful or it will increase the consistency of data and therefore the reliability of my original data. In short if I was to do this questionnaire again I would want a more diverse sample of greater size, I would repeat it for consistency and to increase validity hide the purpose of my questionnaire by not writing the title of it in the word document where the EPQ students accessed it from. Unfortunately as I have no way of being able to perform this in the past anachronisms as a problem would be nigh on impossible to solve.
My aim for this questionnaire was to be able to answer the question ‘what is it to be great’ and however modern the values expressed are I have achieved this, see analysis and am therefore happy with the result.