Survey: Can we predict which students go where?
This activity has been designed to assist schools to collect date regarding the post-school destinations of their students.
Rationale: By tracking students’ post-school destinations, schools will have the data to inform school improvement regarding student pathways and trajectories. Patterns based on student achievement, school participation, and pathways taken in high school compared to post-school destinations may help evaluate the effectiveness of school programs.
Method: By monitoring destinations of former students, schools can determine whether there is any correlation between secondary school achievement, participation in activities, pathways and post-school destinations. This activity is intended to be student and teacher-led, and the end product will be data created by students that can be used by secondary school administrators and leaders.
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The activity consists of a questionnaire that can be administered over the phone or as a web survey. The research will follow appropriate research ethics guidelines on privacy and voluntary participation.
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Grade 11 or 12 students could carry out this research study as part of course work for a class. There should be a teacher liaison from each participating school and a district liaison that is in a senior leadership role. We have used this method before with high school students with very good results both in terms of quality research and learning for the participating students.
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Current students would contact former students and invite them to participate in the study. Participants in the study will be all students who were registered in grade 11 at any point in the 2005/2006 school year, as drawn from school records. Schools would provide former students’ names and contact information to the teacher liaisons for the study.
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Students will get a list of all former students and call them to invite them to participate in the survey. They will provide the option of a phone or web survey that would take approximately 10 minutes (30 factual questions). Students will send links to the web survey via email to the former students. The research team at
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A suggested timeline for this project is to have the teacher liaisons, and district liaison selected by the end of October. The student contact information should also be put-together by the schools by October-end. The data collection process can be completed throughout the months of November to January, and the data analysis phase and reporting can take place during February to March.
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Once teacher liaisons have been identified, the team will be in touch with these liaisons to provide the detailed methodology along with information regarding getting participant consent. We will also provide some help on how you can find students who have moved and how you can increase response rates. This information will be provided on the activity website listed above.
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The team will set up three brief conference calls with the teacher liaisons from the three participating districts throughout the year, so that we can share with each other learning about the activity, discuss questions and any actions that result from the activity. Depending on your availability, the calls will be set up around the following dates: Wednesday, November 19th (Nov/early Dec), Wednesday, March 10th (Early March), Wednesday, May 12th (May). Bulletins will be sent out to all participating districts thereafter sharing learning from experiences implementing the research activities.
Some suggested readings related to data collection in schools:
Sharp, C., Earnes, A., Sanders D., and Tomlinson, K. (2006). Leading a research engaged school.
This study showed that research engagement helps school leaders to develop their schools and make them exciting places to work. This booklet aims to help you to understand more about research engagement and to envisage how it could work in your school.
Levin, B. (1984). Development and initial results of a longitudinal secondary school follow-up study.
Reviews the literature and difficulties of school follow-up studies. Describes the purpose, design, and methodology of the Peel Secondary Follow-up study. Shows how results from the first round of the study raise important issues about students' expectations and how they are or are not borne out.