Data Collection of a Survey on School Community 
Statistical Topic:
Survey analysis is a very different type of analyses from what we have studied before.  When doing data description and inferential analysis using t-tests and ANOVA, the dependent variable of interest was always continuous.  In survey analysis all the variables are categorical, either ordinal or nominal.  For this reason, we cannot assume the power of the normal distribution in completing our inferential tests.  This is why survey inferential analyses are called nonparametric tests. 
Student Issue:
Two types of research questions can be addressed using categorical variables (in fact the same type of questions we have studied before) differences in samples or responses and relationships between two variables.
Data Set:
Collect survey data that focus on understanding about your school community.  Either make up survey questions or use a survey instrument provided by the instructor.  It would be best to give your survey to 40-50 students who are representative of your school community (consider stratified sampling by gender and class).
Goal of Data Analysis Lab: 
The goal is to understand how to complete a relative frequency table (numerical data description) and to draw a bar graph for any categorical survey questions (graphical data description).
Statistical Techniques: 
  1. Give out the survey and collect the data. Create a coding scheme using numbers that is easier to work with than text variables. 
  2. For your assigned question (many contain many subparts) please the responses for each student on the data sheet. 
  3. Create a relative frequency table for your question which contains both counts, frequencies and proportions.
  4. Draw a bar graph for a subset of questions by hand.  Make sure to title and label the x- and y-axis. 
Social Commentary:
  1. Give a definition of a school community.
  2. Can you think of othe areas, say physical or personal, about your school community that are missing from this survey questionaire?