ESL
5301 Survey stories
Survey related
Following
the unanimous decision in the ESL 5301-001 class to collect surveys from people
regarding gay marriages and their related issues on Texas Tech University
campus, I set out on a journey to explore and map people’s responses to the
series of questions posed by us, a group of ten students taking the ESL
5301-001 course. The entire process of
survey collection was quite interesting for the likes of me, who spends most of
my time within the four walls. With a
hope of finishing the surveys, I went to student union building (SUB) on
October 1st 2015, around 12:00 noon with a strong confidence that
lot of students would be present to grab their lunch. As expected, the entire SUB was buzzing with
lots of activities and students. To
start with, I selected people present in the SUB randomly and requested that
they fill out the questionnaire provided they feel comfortable doing this
survey. Though a few people requested
clarifications in certain questions, most of the people filled the survey
without any problem. However, few people
in my department felt that the questions are too personal and suggested
rephrasing the queries in a nicer way.
It should also be pointed out that people who took the survey were
extremely nice and polite in answering to me.
Also, with a huge number of people in the SUB, it was extremely easy to
find the required number of females and males.
In general, the entire exercise of doing the survey helped me in tuning
my skills to approach strangers and also made me realize the importance of
speaking coherently to strangers. (Sriramvignesh
Mani)
Story of the collection of the survey
The assignment of collecting the
survey for the English writing class was altogether a new experience for me. I
never approached any person in my life for filling a survey. The task assigned
to me was to get thirteen survey results from six American males, six American
females and one from myself. In the beginning, I was bit confused about
approaching random people for filling out the survey. At first, I approached my
colleagues (six males and two female Americans) in the department of
Geosciences. They were very happy to discuss gay marriage and gladly filled out
the survey. After finishing the survey, we all started discussing gay marriage
and its relevance in Texas. The discussion was really interesting. At the end
it was very clear to me that most of the young liberals support gay
marriage. In order to make the survey
more reasonable, I went to the student union and approached random unknown
female students. I briefly explained to them about the writing class that I am
enrolled in and the survey that they can help me with. All of the girls very
happily listened to me and agreed to undertake the survey. At the end I was
very happy, and finished completing all
the tasks that were assigned to me by the class. (Sankar)
Story of the survey
I
did my survey on September 30, 2015 in a church group, as I take part in bible
study every Wednesday. I was lucky to find out that there were six American
males and six females on that day, which just fitted the sample amount I needed
to finish. All of them were happy to help me answer the questions. I realized
that people felt uncomfortable if I was present next to them; they would
discuss it with their friends but would hide their answers from me. At the very
first beginning I thought they would answer the questions very quickly, because
I just took no more than two minutes to finish it. However, they took more than
15 minutes to think and discuss it with each other, which was out of my
expectation. It seemed that Americans were actually very cautious about the gay
marriage issue. Since most of them were Christian, I could tell they were
struggling to answer the survey, and most of them disagreed with gay marriage,
especially those who were older. Overall, this was a great chance for me to
study Christians’ acceptance to gay marriage, and I learned that Christians
were more conservative than other people. (Jieying Wu)
Survey Process
It
was relatively easy to obtain the surveys. I decided to ask people located in
the Student Union Building. I chose the after lunch time because at that moment
it is easier to find the students relaxed. Before starting, I planned to
interview student groups instead of asking discreetly. I decided to do this
because I thought that it could be faster to complete the surveys: it is more
practical to explain the survey to a group than individually. I mostly
interviewed students, although I also asked to three employees of the Texas
Tech Housing Department. The strategy of group interviews was initially perfect
in terms of the time devoted because I could receive several surveys in one
shot. I only needed to ask four groups to complete the twelve surveys. However,
one of the sheets was not completely filled out. I made this mistake because I
did not take enough time to review how each sheet was filled out. This was a
defect of my plan that I did not think of. I needed to come back to the Student
Union Building and to search for one more person to ask. Finally, I got two
surveys more, reaching thirteen surveys, and found more one not completely
filled out. (Elliot)
Experiences
while collecting Surveys
Since I’m a graduate student in the
Chemical Engineering department, I mostly asked the people from my department
to fill out the surveys. I asked some of my American colleagues, faculty and staff members and also the undergraduate
students in my teaching assistant (TA) laboratory to fill the survey. Almost all of the graduate and undergraduate
students as well as faculty members filled
out the
survey with a
keen interest in
this topic. Most of the
staff members showed
no inhibitions while
answering the questions;
they were in
fact very interested
in discussing more about this issue with me and asked my opinions regarding it. However, one of the staff members
was not very
comfortable in filling
it out and he simply
said that he
doesn’t support this
agenda of gay marriage at
all. Initially, he assumed that
this survey was a part
of some national
survey to be
filled by all
the Americans and so
he was
not ready to
answer the questions.
But once his colleagues told him
that it’s just
for a graduate
class, he filled
the survey shedding
some inhibitions. The
undergraduate students were the ones who
showed a lot
of curiosity in
this topic and
spent a considerable
amount of time
while filling out this
survey. They, in fact, discussed
this issue with
their friends even
after their experiments
in the laboratory
were finished. I felt that women were more
comfortable in answering
the questions than
men and were
even interested in
knowing the final
results of our
survey. I think it would
be really interesting
to see the
outcome of this
survey as it
may or may
not give us
very surprising opinion
about the people
in the Texas
Tech campus. (Harnoor)
How I collected the surveys
I had all my surveys
done in Holden Hall building in two days. I started my data collection easily
with two male undergraduates; these young men were hanging out in the basement
and were pleased to help me out with the survey. The next three ones, who, I
guessed, were also undergraduates, did not give me such a warm welcome; they
just tried to jot down their answers as quickly as they could without smiling
or talking. Then, I came into the TA room of the History Department, asking
someone there to take the surveys. A female graduate told me that she had never
been concerned about gay marriage before. After finishing with the students, I
tried to approach some older people in their offices; and I had the most
interesting story with an office woman. She wrote and erased her words several
times, struggling with the twelfth question and the last one. She even asked me
who the instructor of my writing class was; she wondered if it was one of the
gender studies professors in the History Department (Are you a gender studies
professor, Mr. Leverett? J). I did not totally understand why she had such an
inquiry, but I did know that she was not comfortable in answering our
survey. (Nam Giang Trinh)
Survey Story
Last Sunday, it was the Mid-Autumn
Festival in China. It means there would have a big reunion party with the whole
family in China. I was homesick every day, especially on this day. The Lubbock
Chinese Association held a celebration dinner for the Mid-Autumn Festival at
the China Star Restaurant. The dinner started at 6 pm and many Americans were
invited. I brought my survey of gay marriage to the dinner, I thought it would
be a good chance and relaxing time to do the survey. I sat in the table with
two American girls, and began my survey. They were very glad to do the survey,
and they were very interested in talking about gay marriage and they found four
of their friends to do the survey, so It was very easy to finish half of the
surveys. After that, I switched to other tables and continued doing my survey.
All the people were very nice and glad to do the survey. I thought it was a
correct choice to take the survey to the party. (Songhe)
Survey Story
After I had a lunch
on Thursday September 24, I was in the Student Union Building. I went to the
ballroom, because I thought many people would rest there. I chose the people
who weren’t doing their work, so I chose people who were eating or people who
were playing on their phones because I think they were free and wouldn’t reject
my asking them favors. My strategy was that I went to a person and asked
whether he/she was an American, and if the answer was yes, I asked him/her to
do a survey. Everything went very well
as I thought; it was very easy to do my surveys. I finished twelve sheets of
survey within an hour. Some women also asked me general personal questions such
as my major, or my country, but no one asked for my name, nor did I ask theirs.
(Ariyawat)
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