Inquiry Tools- Pilot Questionnaire

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My pilot questionnaire  was based on the initial one that I drafted at the start of Module 2 and posted on my blog "Lightbulb Moment". The feedback I received from my SIG on this original draft about the type of questions to ask and how to phrase them helped me formulate another version of this questionnaire on "Dance Teaching and Autism" to trial for my inquiry.

I used Survey Monkey to devise the questionnaire and sent it directly via email to my SIG and other people on my BAPP course with whom I had corresponded to seek their permission via their blogs. My target audience consisted of thirty dance teachers, some of whom I already knew had experience of teaching people with ASD. 

The purpose of the questionnaire was to ascertain what percentage of teachers felt they had sufficient knowledge of ASD to be able to provide a valuable dance learning experience for their pupils. It was also designed to find out whether there was a demand for courses and workshops for dance teachers about ASD.

The questionnaire has yielded some interesting results:

                        SURVEY RESULTS SUMMARY

• 100% of the participants said they were aware of the benefits of dance for people with ASD.

•  75% of the participants said they had experience of teaching people with ASD. 

• 33% of the partcipants said that they felt unsure if they had sufficient knowledge to be able to teach dance to people with ASD. Amongst those who said that they were unsure were teachers already involved in teaching dance to people with ASD.

• 100% of the teachers who took part indicated that they would attend a course to provide further information for dance teachers about ASD.

The conclusion I reached from the results yielded by the questionnaire was that there is a need for courses and workshops about ASD for dance teachers.

It was interesting that all participants felt that, although the teaching of dance students with ASD in an integrated environment had produced challenges, it was beneficial to both pupils with ASD and pupils without ASD.


I acknowledge that this pilot questionnaire was limited by the small amount of people who took part. Also, because of the fact that I deliberately targeted some of my SIG members whom I knew had previous experience of teaching dance to people with ASD, it was not as conclusive as a survey of randomly selected dance teachers would be. It did however suggest that it would be an effective tool for determining if there was a need to provide more guidance for dance teachers about Autism.

I will need to give consideration to what would be the best distribution method for my survey. I chose a direct contact approach, but I notice that some people on BAPP have used social media to invite people to complete their survey. This would obviously increase the audience, but might also open it up to the possibility of acquiring rogue replies. I think that I would prefer to print out the survey and give it to my colleagues to complete directly to be sure of collecting accurate results.