School survey

The School Survey Task: Student Worksheet can be used as a test item, but is also appropriate for group work or discussion. It consists of six questions in total, although it may not be practical to use all questions at the same time.

The scenario and two sample questions are shown below.

A class wanted to raise money for their school trip. They could raise money by selling raffle tickets for a Wii Game system. Before they decided to have a raffle they wanted to estimate how many students in the whole school would buy a ticket. They decided to do a survey first to find out.

The school has 600 students in years 1–6 with 100 students in each year.

• How many students would you survey? How would you choose them? Explain your answers.
• Claire set up a booth outside the canteen. Anyone who wanted to stop and fill out a survey could. She stopped collecting surveys when 60 were completed. What do you think of Claire's survey? Explain your answer.

A hierarchical coded School Suvey Task: Rubric with examples is provided for the six parts of the task. Classroom discussion will provide the opportunity for students to listen to and appraise each others' suggestions.

There are likely to be four levels of response reflecting:

• an inability to appreciate the task (e.g. believing that the aim is to sell tickets rather than survey students about selling tickets)
• an inappropriate analysis (e.g. suggesting biased methods or agreeing that a biased method is good)
• an analysis focusing on relevant but non-central ideas (e.g. suggesting representative aspects of selection rather than random procedures or focussing on one favourable aspect of a proposal while ignoring an inappropriate one)
•  a statistically appropriate response in the context, including realising the need for random selection.