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APPENDIX D: SURVEY METHODOLOGY - TEACHERS, PARENTS, PUPILS

TEACHERS SURVEY

Methodology

1. MORI Scotland interview 469 teachers by telephone between 27 ^th May and 30 ^th June 2005. The schools that participated in the teachers survey also agreed to take part in the pupils survey ¹⁶.

Sampling

2. The sampling universe included all state secondary schools and primary schools with and without special education units in 26 ¹⁷ educational authorities in Scotland. Special schools were also included in the study. While the primary and secondary schools were sampled, all special schools within the 26 selected authorities were invited to participate.

3. This sampling frame of primary and secondary schools was stratified by educational authority and within each stratum schools were selected proportional to the size of the school register.

4. A letter was sent to each of the sampled schools asking for their participation in the teachers and young peoples elements of the evaluation. Schools were asked to fax back a form to indicate if they were able to take part or not. At those that agreed, a nominated person within the school was identified as the main contact for the study to assist in subsequent stages of the design and set-up of appointments.

5. The response rates for each of the school types and teachers are displayed below.

6. At the schools that agreed to take part in the teachers survey the school was telephoned and asked for a range of teachers with different levels of experience and expertise. Within each school contact details of a Guidance teacher, one member of the Management team, and the Enterprise in Education coordinator was requested. Schools were also asked that the remaining teachers should be subject teachers at various stages of their careers, Distributed across subject areas which we selected from a grid.

7. The individual schools provided MORI with a list of teachers to approach for the survey. The teachers were contacted by telephone, to take part in a 10 minute questionnaire. Overall, 91% of the teachers sampled took part in the survey.

PARENTS SURVEY

Methodology

1. 500 parents throughout Scotland were interviewed by MORI Scotland between the 7 ^th and 15 ^th of June. Parents in all local authorities in Scotland were targeted and quotas set based on tenure and region.

Sampling

2. All postcode sectors in Scotland were sorted by LA and stratified within LA by the proportion of council tenants. Postcode sectors were selected proportionate to the population of young people aged 10-18 years. A total of 500 postcode sectors throughout Scotland were included in the sample. These postcode sectors were used to randomly generate telephone numbers for inclusion in the survey.

3. Quotas were set by tenure and region, these are shown below.

4. At each household, we asked to speak to the parent who had most involvement in the children's schooling (as expected, this resulted in more mothers being interviewed than fathers. This is partly a consequence of single parent households being pre-dominantly mothers).

5. Only parents with at least one child at a state primary, secondary or special school were included in the survey. Furthermore, only parents with children in Primary 7 or at secondary school were eligible for interview.

6. During the interview, parents were asked questions about their child. In households with more than one child in the eligible school years, a child was randomly selected by the Computer Aided Telephone Interview ( CATI) script, and subsequent questions used their name as a text substitution.

PUPILS SURVEY

Methodology

1. In the pupil survey, classroom sessions were conducted among Primary 7 and secondary 3 ^rd to 5 ^th years (P7 and S3-S5) who were asked to complete self-completion questionnaires during classroom sessions. A MORI interviewer was present to explain the survey to pupils, to reassure them about the confidentiality of the survey, to assist them with queries about the questionnaire, and to collect completed questionnaires at the end of the session. In total, 3,700 pupils participated in the study which took place between 22 ^nd September and 10 ^th October 2005.

Sampling

2. The sampling universe included all state secondary schools and primary schools with and without special education units in 26 ¹⁸ educational authorities in Scotland. Special schools were also included in the study. While the primary and secondary schools were sampled, all special schools within the 26 selected authorities were invited to participate.

3. This sampling frame of primary and secondary schools was stratified by educational authority and within each stratum, schools were selected proportional to the size of the school register, producing a representative sample of primary and secondary schools.

4. A letter was sent to each of the sampled schools asking for their participation in the teachers and young peoples elements of the evaluation. The year groups included in the survey were Primary 7 and curriculum years S3 to S5. Each school was randomly allocated a maximum of two curriculum years, from which MORI interviewers selected up to two classes at random (using a random number grid) to be selected for sessions. Interviewers were instructed to undertake sessions in mixed ability classes such as personal development classes, in order to avoid the danger that streaming of classes would distort the profile of the sample. Interviewing was carried out through self-completion questionnaires.

5. The response rates for each of the school types are displayed below:

6. To ensure the target of primary school pupils was reached, a fresh sample of primary schools were approached to take part in the pupils' survey. This boosted the number of primary schools participating by 10.

Special Schools

7. Not all special schools felt their pupils were able to complete a questionnaire. In some cases the head teacher decided it would not be appropriate for any pupils to do so, while others nominated pupils who they felt had the ability to participate. Overall 90 pupils from state special schools took part in the evaluation.

8. The data are weighted by school year to reflect the population.

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