Description of the Instrument(s)
Description of the Instrument(s)
The research data was gathered through a 16-question Google Forms survey. Of those 16 questions, 12 were close-ended and four were open-ended. The Google Forms survey link was posted on Blackboard and emailed to students in the Bachelor of Communication Studies program at MacEwan University. Survey results were monitored daily and inserted into a Google Sheets document to track the responses. This research sought to uncover which hobbies were most popular amongst university students, the relationships that students had with their hobbies, and what impact those hobbies had on mental health.
The questions were divided into three categories: demographic, lifestyle, and mental health. Demographic questions inquired about the participants’ age, course load, and time spent doing schoolwork. These questions provided foundational knowledge to the research by giving a general framework of students’ daily workloads. Lifestyle questions focused on the overall balance between schoolwork and hobbies outside of class. Participants answered questions about what hobbies they enjoyed, their relationship with those hobbies, and their connection to the hobby’s subculture(s). Finally, mental health questions helped determine individuals’ joys and stresses, how they felt about their hobbies, and overall life satisfaction. Mental health questions were designed to provide more emotional responses in comparison to the other categories of questions.
