Heroes and Heroines 1

RESPONDENT'S DETAILS (To be checked by the teacher).

Students’ name:

School:

Teacher's name:

In the questionnaire we ask you to circle answers.

Please circle your age below:

Age: 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Please circle male if you are male and female if female:

Male Female

Date today:

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Heroes and Heroines 2

Heroes and Heroines Section.

A. Who is your hero or heroine? Name one person, and what country do you think
they are from?

PLEASE PRINT.- NAME OF HERO............................................

COUNTRY OF HERO OR HEROINE…………………….

B. Is this person male or female? Circle one or the other:

MALE FEMALE

C. Why is this person your hero or heroine? Please circle the words which are most
important to describe your hero or heroine, and put a line under the words that are a
little important.

PLEASE DO NOT CIRCLE MORE THAN 10 WORDS.

1. active, 2. beautiful, 3. brilliant, 4. brainy, 5. brave,

6. caring, 7. confident, 8. dresses well, 9. famous, 10. friendly,

11. funny, 12. gentle, 13. good, 14. good looking, 15. helpful,

16. honest, 17. important, 18. kind, 19. loving, 20. loyal,

21. rich, 22. skillful, 23. strong, 24. warrior.

25. hard working, 26. inventive, 27. classy.

Are there other words you would use?

-------------- ----------------------- -------------------?

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Heroes and Heroines 3

D. To which of the following areas does your hero/heroine belong?

(Please circle one number only.)

1. family 2. film/TV/video-games 3. politics

4. the community 5. religion 6. music

7. sport 8. fashion 9. literature or science. 10. other - what?

E. What are heroes/ heroines for?

Circle Yes or Sometimes or No.

1. To entertain. Yes. Sometimes. No.

2. To be the best at what they do. Yes. Sometimes. No.

3. To give a good example. Yes. Sometimes. No.

4. To do good. Yes. Sometimes. No.

5. To protect against bad things. Yes. Sometimes. No.

6. To risk their lives for others. Yes. Sometimes. No.

7. To show how well things can be done. Yes. Sometimes. No.

8. Another reason: What?__________________________

F. Would you like to be like your hero or heroine?

Circle one : Yes. Sometimes. No.

Please give a reason for your answer.

Because................................................

Thank you for helping us. The teacher will now collect this questionnaire.

Letter to the teachers.

First, thank you very much for agreeing to help with this project.
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Second, we are anxious that the same procedures happen in each class.
Please introduce the questionnaire to the class and go through it with them –taking
five minutes so that they are clear on these points:
 that it is their own personal views we are interested in so please do not
confer with their friends when making their choices,
 about the information we want (we like to have names to ensure they take it
seriously and we do need age and sex),
 clear about the way we want it – e.g., please use circles when we ask for
them, (teachers please check the questionnaires afterwards) and
 so that the young people know that different types of heroes are permitted!
Heroes may exist in all sorts of places including: Family, film/TV/video-
games, politics, the community, religion, sport, fashion, Literature/science
and there may be other places they may exist.
 Some may not have any heroes, and if after encouragement – they still do
not have any heroes we would be very grateful if these students would either
(1) fill out as much of the questionnaire as they can for an imaginary hero; or
(2) in some cases they might be only willing to fill out section E.
 (In previous use of this questionnaire with 10 and 15 year olds less then 2%
of the students fell into the category of not having any heroes.)
 Some classes (discussion classes) discuss local and national heroes to see if
such conversations in class influence their choice of hero. Other classes
(control classes) just complete the questionnaire a second time - to
distinguish the effect of completing the questionnaire from the effect of the
discussions in class. We need the teachers’ name to distinguish discussion /
control classes.
 Please coordinate the timing of the giving of the second questionnaire with
the other teachers because we want to be sure that the class discussions do
not influence the students in the control class that does not do these class
discussions - via conversations that take place outside of class.
 So the second administration of the questionnaire ought to be given in class
immediately after the discussions of local and national heroes – and at about
the same time the control class completes the questionnaire the second time.

Finally, to assess the effect of the class discussions it is vital that students do not
know the purpose or nature of the class discussions until they have taken place.
Please be sure ethical requirements are in place e.g., that the children’s parents
have given permission and that the children themselves know that their
participation is voluntary.

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