The Merrickville Public School Statistical Agency

by Bill Graham, Writer-Editor

Source: @StatCan - Statistics Canada's Electronic Employee Magazine, January 2004.

During the last two months of 2003, Merrickville Public School was transformed into a statistical agency, complete with an oath of office and ID badges. This transformation was as a result of the efforts of two Statistics Canada employees—Lynn Barr-Telford of the Centre for Education Statistics and Geoff Bowlby (Labour Statistics Division and Housing Family and Social Statistics) who are both members of the parent council for Merrickville Public School. The idea for the project was the result of the school principal telling parents about the need for a database of volunteers at a school council meeting.

Lynn describes the beginning of the project this way:

	Geoff with students in school Library.

"We thought this would be a great teaching opportunity and a chance for the grade 8 students to contribute to their school as well. Data management is a curriculum requirement. We knew of the Education Outreach program here at Statistics Canada so Geoff had a meeting with Mary Townsend to discuss the possibilities. It was then that we determined the project was best thought of under the context of 'expert speakers'."

What followed were a number of visits to the school. During their first visit to the school in their capacity as 'expert speaker', they introduced Statistics Canada using the flash video 'We are Statistics Canada' and introduced key concepts important to the working of a statistical agency, for example, confidentiality. They also provided an overview of some of the Statistics Canada survey results that would be of interest to grade eight students.

They visited the school several times subsequently to provide instruction on how to conduct a survey, how to analyse the data, and how to make a presentation, and of course how to write the release. They thought of it as a mini–Survey Skills Development Course.

The project

Lynn describes best what happened next:

"The project began when the school principal requested a list of volunteers, their preferred activities and their preferred times to volunteer. The principal became "the client" and the agency was created - complete with the signing of an oath of office and the receipt of official identification badges. The students were presented the client's requirements for information and set out to design a questionnaire to meet these needs. They established a sound methodology by identifying their target population, created their field work procedures, collected the information and captured it all in an Excel-data base (being careful to keep two files to keep personal information separated from analysis). They then wrote their own "Daily" for release purposes and a PowerPoint presentation for use at a parent council meeting."

"During this endeavour they were exposed to many concepts: confidentiality, data quality, target population, response rates, undercoverage and the list goes on. They experienced first-hand the joys (and frustrations) of performing original analysis and discovered how to summarize raw data in a meaningful way."

	Adam Gallero presents Merrickville PS Daily to the Principal.

In mid-December the class officially released their results to their principal—complete with a reading of the "Daily" text over the school air-waves. That same night the class officially presented their results to parents at a parent's council meeting.

The questionnaire

Two survey questionnaires were developed by the students: one for households (parents and school associates) and the other for local businesses. Questionnaires were delivered on November 17 and returned between November 18 and 24. The survey questionnaires stated the survey objective—recruiting volunteers, pledged confidentiality and asked three questions:

• Would you or anyone else in your household/family be willing to volunteer at Merrickville Public School?
• Do you know of anyone else outside your household or family who might want to volunteer at Merrickville Public School?
• How many people over 18 years of age are living in this household?

For those who volunteered a further section in the questionnaire asked:

• Name
• Gender
• Telephone number
• Postal code
• Preferred time of day to volunteer
• Preferred day of the week to volunteer
• Preferred grade in which to volunteer
• Preferred subject area (academic, sports or arts)
• Willingness to participate in career information discussions, and
• Willingness to share weekend time for special events

The results: (Source: Merrickville Public School Daily Release):

• Out of 165 surveys sent to households, 108 were returned – a 65% response rate. Of these 108 completed surveys, 111 volunteers were identified. Furthermore, about one-third of the households surveyed would supply two volunteers. And, 13 households knew of people outside their home willing to volunteer.
• The majority of volunteers were female.
• Surveys were also sent out to 16 businesses in the Merrickville area. Although we had a lower response rate from the business community, three were willing to volunteer. 
• The preferred activity among Merrickville Public School volunteers is helping with special events such as track meets or Hoops for Heart – with 61 of 111 volunteers. Fifty-three volunteers were willing to come to the school for career-related discussions. The next most preferred activities were helping with academics, the arts, and finally with sports.

It was also discovered that volunteers were equally distributed over the grades, that most preferred mornings to volunteer, that volunteers were equally distributed over the days of the week and that 74% were willing to volunteer on weekends for special events.

All in all it was a highly successful project with the school gaining 111 volunteers, the students meeting the data management requirements of their curriculum and the involvement of Statistics Canada personnel in the school increasing statistical literacy. It should be added that Lynn and Geoff thoroughly enjoyed the experience.