popular news magazines and periodicals image
ani_richar
Preferably about recycling or going "green"
The survey is for college students.
Answer
In school, there are two types of tests: thinking tests and regurgitation tests. Thinking tests are designed to get the student to think of aspects of a topic that may not have been presented through the assignment work. Regurgitation tests are designed to find out if the student has a grasp or knowledge of the material presented in the class.
Surveys can be used in either way also: to promote additional thought or to find out what is known. However, if surveys are used as a data gathering tool in a statistically valid assement, it is critical that they generate unbiased data. This means that they do not lead the responding population towards answers and, typically do not promote additional thought beyond what is. Sometimes a survey will have some questions through out and/or at the end for responders', text based, further information, edification, input, and/or suggestions.
In all cases of data gathering, statistically massaged research, and reporting/charting - The most important question is: What do you want to know? All too often we start designing our charts and tables before we've decided what they should tell us. We decide what our charts and tables should tell us before we ask why in the heck we're going through the entire effort in the first place. When we discuss the data gathering phase, all too often we fail to properly use already existing data. Sometimes we go on our own collection safari when the data is already being collected as a function of an on-going process. Or, we descend up on existing data without truly understanding what it represents, what was measured/counted, how, and in which part of the system; computerized vehicle diagnosis systems are a typical example of this. Even so, all too often we decide where and how we can collect a process' data before asking ourselves just what is it we do know, want to know, need to know, or want to monitor.
I would start by asking you if you want to know what students at your college are personally doing towards recycling? if they have adequate recycling opportunities afforded to them in their departments/classes? if they have adequate recycling opportunities afforded to them in their off-campus dwellings? if they have adequate recycling opportunities afforded to them in the on-campus dwellings? - Or, do you want to know how much dollar and time effort students are currently expending on green activities? how much more they would be willing to expend? what types of green activity support could the college provide their students? - Or, do you discover what green activities students are participating in today and are they likely to attempt to continue when they leave college? how and to what level students are culturalized in a green life-style without even realizing it? or just plain why students are actively green? - There are probably a zillion more general and/or topical questions. For example, questions relating to transportation, electrical use in the dwelling, interior climate control measures, their general environmental knowledge, and more.
If you want a quick and easy survey - Ask yourself if your college's students have the vocabulary basics required to understand basic environmental concepts and popular news reports; the reports in local and national newspapers and periodicals. Without research through AP type and local news paper reports, general magazines like Time, business trade journals like the Forbes, maybe a professional journal for K-12 type teachers, the Wall Street Journal, and maybe even a general arts and sciences periodical like the Smithsonian - I can come up with: ecosystem, sustainable, water shed, environment, carbon emission, wet land, contaminate, old growth forest, species, endangered species, ....and so many more. Make your "survey" a multiple choice, vocabulary test. Depending upon your interest and/or need for correlations, you might want to categorize your words into areas such as biology, chemistry, zoology, etc..., or areas such as general, woodland, ocean, land fill, energy, etc... Note: If you do develop categories, you can reduce skewing by mixing the words up rather than having the words of each category listed together on the survey. You could also begin the survey by asking a few environmental, self assement questions like: are you environmentally aware? concerned? knowledgeable? have you taken any environmental courses? A survey like this may be as humorously un-funny as the TV show, "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?" or some of Jay Leno's questions on the street interviews.
In school, there are two types of tests: thinking tests and regurgitation tests. Thinking tests are designed to get the student to think of aspects of a topic that may not have been presented through the assignment work. Regurgitation tests are designed to find out if the student has a grasp or knowledge of the material presented in the class.
Surveys can be used in either way also: to promote additional thought or to find out what is known. However, if surveys are used as a data gathering tool in a statistically valid assement, it is critical that they generate unbiased data. This means that they do not lead the responding population towards answers and, typically do not promote additional thought beyond what is. Sometimes a survey will have some questions through out and/or at the end for responders', text based, further information, edification, input, and/or suggestions.
In all cases of data gathering, statistically massaged research, and reporting/charting - The most important question is: What do you want to know? All too often we start designing our charts and tables before we've decided what they should tell us. We decide what our charts and tables should tell us before we ask why in the heck we're going through the entire effort in the first place. When we discuss the data gathering phase, all too often we fail to properly use already existing data. Sometimes we go on our own collection safari when the data is already being collected as a function of an on-going process. Or, we descend up on existing data without truly understanding what it represents, what was measured/counted, how, and in which part of the system; computerized vehicle diagnosis systems are a typical example of this. Even so, all too often we decide where and how we can collect a process' data before asking ourselves just what is it we do know, want to know, need to know, or want to monitor.
I would start by asking you if you want to know what students at your college are personally doing towards recycling? if they have adequate recycling opportunities afforded to them in their departments/classes? if they have adequate recycling opportunities afforded to them in their off-campus dwellings? if they have adequate recycling opportunities afforded to them in the on-campus dwellings? - Or, do you want to know how much dollar and time effort students are currently expending on green activities? how much more they would be willing to expend? what types of green activity support could the college provide their students? - Or, do you discover what green activities students are participating in today and are they likely to attempt to continue when they leave college? how and to what level students are culturalized in a green life-style without even realizing it? or just plain why students are actively green? - There are probably a zillion more general and/or topical questions. For example, questions relating to transportation, electrical use in the dwelling, interior climate control measures, their general environmental knowledge, and more.
If you want a quick and easy survey - Ask yourself if your college's students have the vocabulary basics required to understand basic environmental concepts and popular news reports; the reports in local and national newspapers and periodicals. Without research through AP type and local news paper reports, general magazines like Time, business trade journals like the Forbes, maybe a professional journal for K-12 type teachers, the Wall Street Journal, and maybe even a general arts and sciences periodical like the Smithsonian - I can come up with: ecosystem, sustainable, water shed, environment, carbon emission, wet land, contaminate, old growth forest, species, endangered species, ....and so many more. Make your "survey" a multiple choice, vocabulary test. Depending upon your interest and/or need for correlations, you might want to categorize your words into areas such as biology, chemistry, zoology, etc..., or areas such as general, woodland, ocean, land fill, energy, etc... Note: If you do develop categories, you can reduce skewing by mixing the words up rather than having the words of each category listed together on the survey. You could also begin the survey by asking a few environmental, self assement questions like: are you environmentally aware? concerned? knowledgeable? have you taken any environmental courses? A survey like this may be as humorously un-funny as the TV show, "Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?" or some of Jay Leno's questions on the street interviews.
I know the danger of second hand smoke but recently heard that third hand smoke is also dangerous. What is it?
ghostrider
Answer
Third hand smoke is smoke on your clothes or things that have absorbed smoke in your house even if you stopped smoking. It just doesn't go away unless you work at getting rid of it. In doing searches in multiple databases, that is specifically in PubMed, PubMed Central and in numerous proprietary databases, I found only two articles that asserted that third hand smoke was dangerous and one that talked about the way the media, rather than scientists have grabbed onto the idea of third hand smoke.
One article that I do not cite is research that won a high school science contest on the effects of third smoke on genetic changes in mice. The second is in a nursing journal called Nurse Practitioner. The article is cited below. The third article is in a science magazine called New Scientist, a very respectable periodical, but a science news magazine. All the other articles I found were in newspaper articles or popular magazines.
The New Scientist article points out that until some actual scientists do research on it, all the popular articles are not reliable. Groups that oppose smoking have written about third hand smoke, but in doing so, they run the risk of making statements that can be found later to be wrong and thereby lose their credibility. People will just stop believing them.
From personal experience I can say that I find things on which I smell smoke five years after stopping smoking. Not only that, but I keep trying to get the smoke residue off of things; it is persistent, and it is unpleasant. But is in dangerous? Maybe we should not jump to that conclusion so fast.
The dangers of inhaling dubious facts.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial).
New Scientist 202.2702 (April 4, 2009): p.3(1).
Do your patients know about third-hand smoke?
Jamesetta Newland. Nurse Practitioner. Seattle: Feb 2009. Vol. 34, Iss. 2; pg. 5
Third hand smoke is smoke on your clothes or things that have absorbed smoke in your house even if you stopped smoking. It just doesn't go away unless you work at getting rid of it. In doing searches in multiple databases, that is specifically in PubMed, PubMed Central and in numerous proprietary databases, I found only two articles that asserted that third hand smoke was dangerous and one that talked about the way the media, rather than scientists have grabbed onto the idea of third hand smoke.
One article that I do not cite is research that won a high school science contest on the effects of third smoke on genetic changes in mice. The second is in a nursing journal called Nurse Practitioner. The article is cited below. The third article is in a science magazine called New Scientist, a very respectable periodical, but a science news magazine. All the other articles I found were in newspaper articles or popular magazines.
The New Scientist article points out that until some actual scientists do research on it, all the popular articles are not reliable. Groups that oppose smoking have written about third hand smoke, but in doing so, they run the risk of making statements that can be found later to be wrong and thereby lose their credibility. People will just stop believing them.
From personal experience I can say that I find things on which I smell smoke five years after stopping smoking. Not only that, but I keep trying to get the smoke residue off of things; it is persistent, and it is unpleasant. But is in dangerous? Maybe we should not jump to that conclusion so fast.
The dangers of inhaling dubious facts.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial).
New Scientist 202.2702 (April 4, 2009): p.3(1).
Do your patients know about third-hand smoke?
Jamesetta Newland. Nurse Practitioner. Seattle: Feb 2009. Vol. 34, Iss. 2; pg. 5
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