Week 8: Analyzing Responses

Throughout this week, I have been meticulously reviewing every answer I received from my seven different surveys. First, I started with the pre-survey and went through each participant’s responses. Because the purpose of this survey was to discover the biases and tendencies of each participant, I did not intend to draw any firm conclusions from it. However, it was very interesting to see how the participants responded.

The very first question on the pre-survey was, “What is conflict?” Despite some variation in wording, the general sentiment was the same. Most people believed that, at its core, conflict is simply a misunderstanding or miscommunication between different entities. However, the responses did not remain as similar throughout the rest of the pre-survey, or any of the other surveys.

My goal in analyzing the surveys was to understand how mature adults handle conflict in movies. Therefore, I examined how aggressive or avoidant they were, who they placed blame on, and why they believed conflicts had escalated. Understanding their reactions gave me insight into how I should design the course for high school students. What participants prioritized most would help determine what I should emphasize in the course.

After much deliberation, I concluded that the most important skills to teach high school students are how to listen effectively, when to step away from a situation, and how to recognize a conflict before it escalates. I plan to do this by showing clips from films and building interactive questionnaires around those clips.