Guidelines for Administering Pre and Post Student Surveys

Pre and post surveys for Emily’s Hope Substance Use Prevention Curriculum are an important component to help you monitor student progress and ensure that the implementation of the curriculum is supporting your students in learning important curriculum content; develop the skills needed to make healthy and safe choices; and support you in your instruction strategies.  The pre and post surveys support Emily’s Hope in ensuring continued curriculum improvement; and our continued research development.  

Pre surveys should be administered PRIOR to any instruction in the curriculum.  The purpose of the pre survey is to determine what the student knows prior to the instruction of the curriculum content.  It can be helpful to explain this to students so that they do not become frustrated with survey questions that they may not know the answer to.  

Post surveys should be administered AFTER the completion of the curriculum instruction.  The purpose of the post survey is to determine what the student knows after the instruction of the curriculum content.  

The following guidelines can be used during both the pre and post survey administration with students.  Consistency is important – administer the pre and post surveys in a similar manner with students.  It is important that the students are evaluated on their curriculum content knowledge not on their reading comprehension or test taking skills.  

• Explain to your students what pre surveys and post surveys are and the purpose of them. This will help them understand the purpose of them and be more comfortable in completing them.
• It may be difficult for students to complete surveys independently, so modifying the presentation to work for your students would be appropriate. An example of this:
  • presenting the survey questions on your Interactive board and reading the question aloud to them and walking students through responses, so that they can select the response that they believe is correct.
• As you consider how you can modify the presentation of the surveys to support students, ensure that you are NOT providing cues to the correct responses. 
• Survey questions and response choices can be read aloud to students.  
• Plan your administration time when you can provide appropriate “wait time” for students to think through their responses. 
• Survey responses include visual images to help students understand the text.  This can be helpful to students who are dual language learners and students who need assistance with reading comprehension. 
• Celebrate success!  Create a fun and enjoyable learning environment that encourages student participation.