Understanding the Community

When understanding the community, a school administrator must accomplish which of the following?

• Conduct only public opinion polls
• Focus exclusively on conducting a school climate survey
• Take a sociological survey, identify the community's power structures, and measure public opinion.
• Identify the community's power structures and conduct a carefully designed survey with the Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO).

Which of the following does NOT represent components sampled and analyzed in a sociological survey?

• community leadership
• demographic characteristics
• economic trends
• school budget statements

The analysis of interpersonal conflict (sectional neighborhood conflict or inter-staff conflict) through a sociological survey will likely address which category?

• Community Groups
• Leadership
• Political Structure
• Social Tensions

A power structure, especially in a local community, is defined as: 

• a single individual who has top-down authority over the school and community organization.
• a network of interpersonal relations wherein power and authority is accorded to members that have the ability to influence or to control how decisions are made.
• a fully decentralized and diffused distribution of control and influence, making all members equally autonomous in decision-making.
• a single individual who has top-down authority that elicits a bottom-up response from staff-line members in lower levels of the school organization.

In contrast to the informational framework that a sociological inventory and power structures provide regarding community dynamics, measuring public opinion enables the school administrator or researcher:   

• to understand how to use the social science tools of sampling a community.
• to refute the informational framework findings of the first two approaches of preliminary community analysis.
• to understand the community's perspectives, convictions, reactions, and feelings about the school enterprise and institution.
• to prescribe a decisive course of action to remedy immediate and long-term school problems.

Which of the following will likely not represent a type of opinion research?

• Forums and Conferences
• Advisory Committees
• Experimental Design
• Public Opinion Surveys

When making plans for conducting an opinion survey, a researcher or an educator should NOT ask which of the following questions:

• What is the problem to be studied?
• What is the best methodology to be used in the study?
• How much time and how much money will be required to conduct this study?
• Will the study guarantee and confirm from the public opinion that the school is high performing?