Perception Data: What to do with data from pre-post surveys

For the Accountability part of the ASCA  National Model counseling programs develop results reports or they can use the DATA Report form from the Making DATA Work (Third Edition). Basically you want to share with stakeholders  the before and after score, average or percent for the surveys. Results should be summarized succinctly, shown for comparison, and calculated for percent change.

For example, 

After the STEMazing month of April, both 3rd and 4th grade students (both genders) showed increases on the  survey.

Comparison:

Grade 4 Pre-Survey: 63.4 percent

Post-Survey: 66 percent

Report on percent change:

There was a 4.1 percent increase in attitudes about careers in the STEM cluster for fourth graders from the beginning to end of April.

The main reason I like to report my results using the DATA format over the Results Report is one to two simple graphs can show the pre-post surveys in a way that stakeholders can easily see the activity resulted in a change. In other words, what the counseling program offered had a direct impact on students.

Be sure to share these results with stakeholders on school website and with your School Advisory Council. Some results might be appropriate to share in a staff training like I do annually with my Bullying and School Climate data.