Ford School Master's Students Purchasing Behavior

Our survey sought to answer a number of questions revolving around Ford School master’s students textbook purchasing behavior, with the intent to provide information useful to faculty when selecting text(s) for their courses. We were interested in how students gain access to books/texts for their class and what factors influence their likelihood to do so. Specifically, we wanted to know:
What proportion of classes ask students to buy textbooks? - No specific hypothesis, but wanted a baseline of the proportion of classes asking students to acquire texts to put other results into context.
Are students in different programs more or less likely to purchases texts? - We expect dual degree students to purchase texts most often, followed by MPPs, with MPAs the least likely.
How likely are students to acquire the required texts? - One of our core questions. We don’t have a specific hypothesis but assume it is not close to 100%.
Do different class types affect the likelihood of acquiring text(s) for a class?
Quantitative vs qualitative - We expect quantitative classes to induce students to purchase texts more often as texts are used for problems.
Ford vs Non-Ford - No specific …show more content…
If the nonresponse rate is higher, I would be concerned with potential bias. For example, perhaps students who respond to surveys are more likely to purchase texts for class or differ in some other way from nonresponders. In this high nonresponse case, I would compare the demographics of our survey respondents to Ford School master's students as a whole (though my current survey does not have demographic information, I would add this). If our survey respondents look similar to master's students as a whole, I would not expect bias. If I see a difference between respondents and Ford master's students I would need to be careful about drawing conclusions from our sample to the entire population of Ford master’s