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Created: October 27, 2003
Latest Update: October 27, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

A Pilot Study on Answerability for Our Alumni

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, October 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Presented to Professor Dia Dorsey on October 28, 2003, for her consideration and the consideration of the Sociology Department by the students of Sociology 220, as a class project.

Background: Answerability and Its Importance.

Definitions, comparison with accountability and with responsibility.
Note that it is not an epiphany, but a learned skill from a gift that most of us have.

Define monologic nonanswerability and the new measurement of social pain by MRI at MIT and the pain of being "included out".

Acknowledge the school's recognition that we need to communicate better with our alumni, and its effort to do so.

Methodology:

Snowball sampling: start with those we know and invite them to help us find others.
Satrat with the alumni calling list, and do the same. Call and invite them to help us find others.
Start with our present students on the grounds that they are the alumni of tomorrow.
Ask our present students what they would like their school to know about them and how they would like it to stay in touch.

Pilot interview schedule: Thursday, October 23, 2003, our class brainstormed the questions they thought would give us a start.

Data collected Thursday.
Data coded and entered Thursday and over weekend.
Data analyzed.

Conclusions from our pilot survey:

We asked questions that required time to answer. Like what would you like your school to remember about you? Those questions interrupted whatever other activities the students were engaged in and they didn't much care to answer.

Yes/No, or multiple choice questions are much easier for the respondent and ask less of him/her. Of course, they also provide less answerability, but we can allow for answerability when someone is willing to go that far.

Number of surveys in pilot study:

Results:

Conclusions and Suggestions for a More Extensive Pilot Survey