Katherine Nguyen

Group Members: Zoe Adams, Erinn Marx, Nichol Adair, and Cameron Larson

Project One: Environment vs. Education Response/Reflection

Response

A group of individuals who were all in the same Political Science concurrent

enrollment class were given a project. Having to form a group, the five people of the

many decided to come together. The professor had assigned a project that challenged

the political views on certain topics such as the educational system, state versus federal

power, whether two senators were sufficient for the population of the specific state, the

societal dichotomy of the political spectrum, etc. Out of the many choices and topics to

choose from the group had decided researching the opinion on environmental health as

well as the educational system. The question was then approached and had developed

into the concluding question of, Does the general public believe that environmental

health is more important than the educational system, or vise versa?

They had decided on the question because the topics were not too complex for

the general public to understand but it allowed and left room for a more intellectualized

statement to develop. Believing that the question was good enough the group went onto

hypothesize. They had believed that the younger the individual the more they would

lean towards or advocate for environmental health. As for the older the individuals, they

had predicted that they would support and promote for a better educational system. The

hypothesis was based on their belief of how the younger population was more prone to

not seeing the different level of importance in the advocacy for a better educational

system due to how they themselves were in the system. As for the older population

would have a retrospective view of the importance of education. This was their only
 Katherine Nguyen
Group Members: Zoe Adams, Erinn Marx, Nichol Adair, and Cameron Larson

prediction yet, later on throughout the project they had decided that they had wanted to

ask more questions in order to determine where the person’s political stance was when

it came to advocating for either education or the environment.

To begin, they had came together in order to brainstorm ideas and topics that

they would like to collect and survey individuals on. Coming to the concluding question

of whether, environmental health is of more importance than education, or vise versa(?).

They began to realize that a singular question would not be enough, they then started to

insert new questions into the developing survey in order to have a greater

understanding of where the individual lies politically in their own opinion. The survey

had a conclusive amount of seven questions. The first four questions were scaled. The

scale ranged from one to five, one meaning strongly disagree, two, disagree, three

equaling indifferent, four, agree, and five meaning strongly agree. The first four

questions included:

Rate

➢ How strong do you believe in global warming/climate change being a serious

issue?

➢ Do you believe that the education system is corrupt?

➢ Do you think government could be more involved in the current natural disasters

in America? (i.e. Harvey, Irma and Puerto Rico)

➢ Do you believe teacher’s salaries are a fair reflection of their work and labour?

The second part of their survey was written and included the following questions:

Written
 Katherine Nguyen
Group Members: Zoe Adams, Erinn Marx, Nichol Adair, and Cameron Larson

➢ 1. Should government be putting more money/focus in schools or environmental

issues?

➢ 2. Is Standardized testing an efficient/effective way of determining a student’s

worth, knowledge, and intellect?

They then finished their survey with the concluding question of:

Concluding Question

➢ Do you believe that environmental health is more important than education or

vise versa? (You May Provide a Scale Number or a Written Response)

In addition to these questions they had inserted demographical questions such as,

Name, Age, and Political Stance. The group had wanted to keep the survey small and

simple in order for the general population to provide a more genuine response. The

group then decided that each of them would collect ten surveys in order to have a semi-

large data base. They had to have five adults and five minors take the survey in order to

create an equal balance between the amount of “younger” and “older” people. After

collecting the data, the results of survey were more qualitative than quantitative.

The calculated results of the ratings for each of the questions were lower than

the group had thought to be. Yet, a main reason why the results were lower than the

group anticipated was because of the lack of entering data. They had originally planned

for a total of 50 participants and results, when they only ended up with a total of 34

participants and results. The first question in the rating area of the survey was 3.8. If

they were to round this number up to the nearest whole number it would become a four,

allowing for them to say that the vast majority of the population they asked believed that

global warming/climate change is a serious issue. They fully acknowledge that it is

 Katherine Nguyen
Group Members: Zoe Adams, Erinn Marx, Nichol Adair, and Cameron Larson

happened not only because of “natural” causes but mainly because of the human

influences as well. The results for the second question came to a 3.4. This question

mainly address the curiosity of if the educational system is corrupt or not. This

quantitative result proves to us, out of the 34 people that they either did not care or were

neutral about the idea of the educational system being corrupt. The only result that was

under a three average was the fourth question. Do you believe teacher’s salaries are a

fair reflection of their work and labour? The overall average for this question was a 2.11,

telling us that the participants disagreed with the fairness of teacher salaries.

In conclusion, the group had discovered that the results of their survey were not

wrong but they were not right as well. To answer the concluding question, they had

found the amount of advocates for education we about equal on each side. The younger

population said that education was of more importance when it came down to the

deciding factor of whether environmental health or the educational system was more

critical. There was one outlier in the group of surveys where the particular participant

stated that, “There are more important issues than these.” There were also a few

participants who believe that bother issues were equally just as important and directly

influenced one another. What one of the individuals had learned from this group project

was to choose their partnerships more wisely. Since the project was dependent on the

people within each group she believed it is important to choose those who will pull their

weight. Overall, the group believed that the project went well and they found that

education is more of a critical issue than environmental health.