The fourth task that our group had to do for our practicum was collect data. Data collection was very important for our practicum because we were able to use it to evaluate certain aspects of our experience. When we first talked about data, we were not sure what type of data we needed to collect because the sample (athletes) was so large. We knew that we wanted to collect the counties where the athletes are from, evaluations after each of our sessions, their knowledge of health education, and answers to questions during our sessions. We decided to use a few of different methods to collect our data; session registration, pre- and post-surveys, zoom poll questions, zoom chat questions. The first method that we used was a registration form. The athletes had to complete this registration form before they could join the Wellness Wednesday sessions. The registration was only for the Wellness Wednesday sessions because Special Olympics North Carolina wanted to see if it worked before making the athletes register for every session. The purpose for the registration was to collect basic demographic data such as first and last name and the county where they participate. We used the registration data to find out what counties in NC were most represented, the urban-rural breakdown, the number of participants we had for each session, and our retention rates. The county that was the most represented was Mecklenburg county with 170 registrants and there were more rural counties represented than urban. The second method of data collection was to use pre-and post-surveys. These surveys were used many times throughout the semester. For different sessions such as the Health Promotion session, we used a long pre-survey to assess the knowledge of the athletes on the topic of health promotion. We used this to compile the responses and put together charts and graphs for the health promotion presentation. We used post surveys/evaluations after every wellness Wednesday, the evaluations included 5 questions. The questions were, name, whether they enjoyed the session, if they learned something, what we could have done better, and if there was anything else, they would like to learn about. Our evaluations were overwhelmingly positive with 97% of participants liking our sessions. We did have a limitation where we had some participants fill out the survey more than one time, we will make sure to emphasize not to do that next time.
The third method of data collection that we used was zoom poll questions. One of the most used methods this semester was our poll questions via zoom. Every sessions Ashley would set up a couple of poll questions using the zoom feature. Makenzie would then ask the athletes the question and have them answer it. The questions would always relate to the health topic of that wellness Wednesday. The Partner Up Power Up program was set up so that the participants had wellness goals each week that correlated to the wellness Wednesday. We would use the poll feature to ask the athletes if they completed their goal for the week and whether they found it easy or hard. This allowed us to look at how many participants completed their goals or at least attempted to. We had a pretty good We used these polls in every session and we even had one session, Special Smiles, which had 26 poll questions. Some of the results from our polls were: we had an average of 67 responses for each poll, a total of 3903 responses, and about 81% of the athletes completed their goals each week.
The fourth method of data collection that we used was zoom chat questions. These chat questions were very similar to the poll questions. We always had some questions that we couldn’t ask using the poll feature, such as “what was their favorite thing to cook.” Makenzie would ask the athletes open-ended questions that were related to the topic and have the answer it in the chat. The athletes were very engaged in answering these questions because Makenzie would call out their names and answers which made them feel heard in a big group. This was all qualitative data, so it was harder to analyze and collect effectively. This data was different than the poll questions because it was easier for the athletes to give a more in-depth answer rather than a yes or no. Collecting data was very important and did show us a great deal about our work and its impact. There were some limitations to the data such as low completion rate, athletes answering twice, technology issues, and others. We are hoping to improve our data collection next semester by working through these limitations so we can have an even better accuracy next semester.