School Demographics from My Study

This post is part of a series inviting discussion, comments and reflection on the results of my dissertation.

In the next set of posts on my research, we’ll look at who actually took the survey. Today, let’s review the demographics of the schools where the videoconference coordinators work. Is a school like yours represented in the study? That is one way to assess the results and determine if the results are applicable to your school.

277 Survey Responses

310 participants in eight countries and 33 U.S. states originally responded to the survey. However, 33 of these did not give enough information to create a complete utilization score; therefore the final number of participants in this study was 277 in six countries and 31 U.S. states.

School Level

Question: Select your school level.

School Demographics: School Level

Ethnic Makeup

Question: Indicate the ethnic makeup of the school. The percents are shown.

School Demographics: Ethnic Makeup

# of Teachers (Size of School)

School Demographics: Number of Teachers

City Population

School Demographics: Population of the City

National School Lunch Plan (NSLP) Score

Question: Do you know the National School Lunch Program score for your school? yes / no. If yes, please enter the NSLP score or your best guess.

One hundred nine participants (39.4%) knew the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) score for their school and a few more were willing to enter their best guess. So 124 participants gave the NSLP score for their school.

The NSLP score is often used as a measure of poverty and is the percent of students receiving free and reduced-cost lunches.

School Demographics: NSLP

Your Turn

Do you see your school(s) represented in this study? If not, what is missing? Please comment!

Do any questions arise as you see these results? What do you wonder about?

Do you think the schools in the study, as described here, are representative of who is using videoconferencing in the curriculum? If not, why not?

I really do want to know what you think! One of the weaknesses of my study is that I don’t know exactly who is on the listservs for videoconferencing. How do I know that those who answered my survey are representative of the population (the people on the listservs)? This matters because the results of a study can only be generalized (applied) to a population similar to those who participated in the study. So what do you think? Is this sample (the people who responded) representative of the population of videoconference coordinators?

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