Lilly Ball

Trenfield 5th
5-12-17
TGPLAN Survey Report

For TGPLAN my group wanted to study how poverty can affect a child’s educational

opportunities. The purpose of this survey was to see what the community of Austin had to say

about their education and how they believe poverty can truly affect a student. “Almost one-fifth

of Travis County children live in poverty” this means that 20% of children are more focused on

wondering where their next will come from than school(CAN Community). Our target audience

was everyone. We wanted to be able to see how everyone viewed this topic whether living in a

high income area, a low income area, or right in the middle.

To distribute our survey we put the link to it on web pages that reached several different

neighborhoods of ranging socioeconomic statuses, we also distributed the survey among

friends and family to pass a long so we could see a wide range of results. We attempted to

create a random sample survey meaning that we have no connection to the survey takers and

the answers we receive should be varied. In our survey we used several demographic questions

such as recording zip code, level of education, if they were a child, if they had children to gauge

responses. For example, high income neighborhoods may have differing views on poverty

affecting a child’s education than a low income neighborhood. We also used ranking questions

asking about how severely poverty can harm a child’s education. In our survey we also

implemented question specific to the survey taker, asking them what helps them the most in

learning, what is available to them etc.. These questions would help us to see if schools are

able to provide what works best for their students.

The results we received were mainly the same idea, overall the majority of people

viewed poverty as a serious cause to disrupt a child’s success in education. In the survey

analysis some surprising patterns did arise. For example, the charts below show that those who
are not in the school system or do not have a child in the school system believe that poverty

affects a student’s success more than those who are in the school system or have a child in the

school system.

This was a shock to me because I imagined that those going to school would see the effects

first hand of how poverty can cause a differ in success of a student. A theory I have on this is

that students and parents of students know their child or schoolmate can do their best if they put

effort in.

Our survey was not perfect and there are several things we could do better if we were to

implement the survey again. The first thing I’d change would be how we got the survey out

there. I would prefer it to be more random next time such as standing outside of the grocery

store and handing it out or putting it on pages such as reddit. I would also add in more

demographic questions such as income level because that would be a better gauge than zip

code. Another way I would improve the survey would be to clarify questions more. I would also

advertise the survey via social media more.

Overall the survey showed us that the community can see that poverty truly does affect

the success of a student in their life. This survey was great because we were able to see
patterns between groups of people and their views and also gauge how much the community

already knew about our topic. Although the survey was not perfect, it was eye opening.

Works cited:
"Poverty." CAN Community Dashboard | Poverty. Web.

<http://www.cancommunitydashboard.org/drilldowns/poverty.php>.