TOE Timeline Host Family Data
From AFSWiki
Event Activities
Group leaders in the U.S. and Germany drafted a survey for host families of students from the target cultures going back 4 program cylces. The primary purpose of the survey was to identify cultural differences that host parents had observed the host and home culture. The main topics addressed were family life, communication, and relationships. Questions were also built in to the survey to determine whether any of these differences were regionally based.
1472 U.S. families who hosted German students were sent the survey. 596 people or 40% of families contacted, responded to the survey.
In the U.S. the survey was administered via an online survey tool, Zoomerang. In Germany former host families received a hard copy of the survey. U.S. respondents were able to check a box to indicate whether they would like a copy of the results and (insert number) checked this box. This helped to make them feel a part of the process.
A summary report was crated and the results of the survey were incorporated into the presentations made in the first national meeting.
Evaluation
The literature review was conducted and reading topics were assigned prior to data gathering phase of the project. In the future we recommend that the survey take place and initial results are analyzed prior to the literature review or at least concurrent with it. This would allow for a more targeted approach.
In the future we recommend providing guidelines and instruction for data analysis i.e. identify categories and subcategories of responses using an Excel spreadsheet and color code which quotes might be appropriate to include in the handbook.
Resources
- Copy of survey
- Sample data file
- Summary report
