Hypothesizing and working forward...

September 16, 2009

Now I had to come up with my own survey questions. Diana and Vanessa wanted me to come up with questions I would like to ask about teen pregnancy, mental health, and substance abuse.

The catch of trying to come up with my own questions is that I have to put myself into the position of the participant.

I had to think about things like:

• How comfortable would they feel being asked this question?
• How would they interpret my question?

The list goes on, but those are the main points I focused on when I was bringing up questions.

Of course I had the San Mateo and Tonga survey to copyright questions from, but I was inputting my own questions to compare and contrast our surveys.

In the middle of doing this task, I got lost because I didn't know what I was trying to prove. What point was I trying to get to by asking these questions? That's why I came up with a hypothesis.

• I believe that the Tongan youth are influenced to drink and/or smoke by the people around them.
• I believe that the Tongan youth become pregnant because their parents do not really emphasize that issue with them. They are also somewhat influenced by the people around them.
• I believe that Tongan youth are mentally unhealthy because things that matter most to them in life are not going right. I also believe that they are not involved with much activities that can relieve their stress level.

Alright, bare with me. I came up with this off of my own knowledge. =). In many cases, I know it can be different. That's why I came up with a conceptual flow map. It's sort of like a flow chart where I point out the outcomes and connect it to everything that leads up to that. In this case, the outcomes are unhealthy behaviors. I connected everything that leads up to it.

Well my hypothesis helped me a lot with my questions. My hypothesis helped because I wanted to ask questions that might lead to my beliefs. If not, then my hypothesis was wrong.

I found mental health the hardest to ask questions on, but Vanessa helped me a lot with that. I mainly used San Mateo's youth survey as a guideline for my mental health questions.

I knew already that IRB wouldn't let me do anything with surveys because I'm still a minor. =(. But it didn't stop me from still trying to get somewhere with my survey. I still wanted to work on it and see what I can do. So far, so good.