Below I have proposed a sample survey that we may adopt to collect data from the corps of cadets.  Parts of this survey are based on the survey conducted of New Zealand secondary school students in

“Brief report: Disposable income, and spending on fast food, alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling by New Zealand secondary school students” (Darling et.al 2006)

Academic Class

1. Gender
2. Family Household Income
   1. $0-25,ooo
   2. $25,001-50,000
   3. $50,001-75,000
   4. $75,001-100,000
   5. $100,000+
3. Monthly Income
   1. $0-50
   2. $51-100
   3. $101-150
   4. $151-200
   5. $201-250
   6. $251-300
   7. $301-350
   8. $351-400
   9. $401+
4. Weekly Spending
   1. $0-10
   2. $11-20
   3. $21-30
   4. $31-40
   5. $41-50
   6. $50+
5. Percentage of weekly spending spent on Alcohol, tobacco(to include vape), and fast-food
   1. 0-10%
   2. 11%-20%
   3. 21%-30%
   4. 31%-40%
   5. 41%-50%
   6. 51%-60%
   7. 61%-70%
   8. 71%-80%
   9. 81%-90%
   10. 91%-100%
6. Source of income
   1. ROTC stipend
   2. Part-time Job
   3. Parent/Guardian or other Family
   4. Other: List below

Help Received:

Brief report: Disposable income, and spending on fast food, alcohol, cigarettes, and gambling by New Zealand secondary school students. Helen Darling, Anthony I. Reeder, Rob McGee, Sheila Williams 2006

Over the last few weeks my group has begun to form how we will conduct our data collection. My first thought was to conduct our survey through a google doc emailed out to the corps of cadets. This model has a few advantages. First, the online survey would be less intrusive to people. They could complete the survey on their own time and perhaps be more willing to complete the survey due to that. There is, however, a distinct disadvantage to this model. I personally remember the many times I have completely ignored these emails without going any further than the subject line. Therefore, I believe it is most advantageous to conduct the survey in person. I believe that approaching people in barracks with a paper survey, would result in a much higher participation rate than conducting the survey through email. There would have to be several key guiding principles to this survey. First, the survey must be concise, no more than ten questions that can be conducted fairly quickly to encourage participation. Second, we must be careful to not bias our data to a specific class in barracks. It will be easiest to get participation among our classmates in the class of 2018. This however would not provide a representative sample of the corps. Third, while avoiding the potential for bias based on academic class we must also make sure we get a representative population for sources of income. Therefore, we must seek out equally large samples of commissioning and non commissioning cadets.