What brands do we trust?

Teacher Guidelines:

This article reports on a survey of Australian’s most trusted brands. It can be used as a basis for discussing the design of a survey, deciding on a sample group and sample size, and how to report the outcomes. Students may like to design their own survey for their fellow students or school.

De-coding and Meaning-making

The worksheet is intended to help students work through the methodology used by the company that carried out the survey for Reader’s Digest.

Using and Analysing

The worksheet asks students to design their own survey about trust in brands (they might like to each choose a different product/service) and compare their results.

Classroom discussion could tease out how to write good survey questions, considering the dilemma of providing specific options for respondents to choose from versus open ended questions.  How reliable do the students think the Reader's Digest survey was and how could they improve it?

Possible Activities: Students might like to create posters of their findings for display for the rest of the school - the brands that influence us and why. They could consider using brand images and slogans along with key findings, graphs and their methodology.

Debriefing

What did you learn? How has your thinking on this topic changed? What new maths skills have you developed? What thinking strategies have you found useful?

What investigation would you like to consider now?