Week 7: Done with data collection!

Welcome back, you omnipresent omnivores!

It’s been a looooong time since we last saw each other because of spring break, but I hope you guys have been well! This week of the senior project was honestly a bit slow, as it mostly focused on just data analysis and compiling it together. However, as of today (4/17), we have officially finished collecting all the data we will be collecting for my project!

That’s right. The long-awaited and long-overdue distribution of the post-assembly surveys has been completed, and honestly, I think chronologically everything played out the best possible way. We administered the surveys the week before spring break, and while that does mean two weeks have passed since the assembly rather than one, the fact that a week of break has passed between our assembly and now means that we will be able to thoroughly test retention. Breaks are a time when students often forget what they learned (or at least I did), and seeing how well these kiddos retained the information from the mental health assembly is going to be really fun. Also, these conditions are particularly helpful in mimicking real life because students often have a lot going on in their lives, and giving a week of break in between lets us see how effective our mental health assembly truly was. 

Regarding how effective the assembly was, a few changes were made to the survey itself ahead of the assembly. While the questions remained the same, I decided to add a section of the survey specifically dedicated to getting feedback from the students of the experimental group. This section includes space for them to leave any comments they have about the assembly, as well as choosing which sections were most effective and which sections they thought were unnecessary. While this system has given us some gems like “I wish it didn’t last as long”, it has been really helpful to see what the kids thought of our assembly. This not only gives me a heads up as to what changes to expect, but it also lets us know what topics are well-received and important to include in the future. 

Lastly, I want to take a bit to officially talk about some of the pre-survey results I have found and how interesting they are. For one, the boys in this study actually have a significantly higher attitude score than the girls in the study. While their knowledge scores did not have a statistically significant difference, their attitude did, which was incredibly surprising. Most studies so far have found the exact opposite to be true, and to see that my study is an outlier is really cool. Furthermore, when analyzing students’ grades, I found that students in Grades 7 & 8 did not have a significant difference between their mental health literacy scores. However, both of these grades had significantly higher scores in the mental health literacy section than did sixth graders. I believe this is most likely the amount of growth children experience heading into 7th and 8th grade, especially considering the profound social and emotional changes that this age range experiences every single year. 

While I do have more things to share with you guys, I’m just about to hit my word limit on this blog, so I’ll share all of it and more with you guys next week. See you on the flip side, you persistent presenters!