Procedure
We proposed 5 steps to how to conduct the whole process of planning and collecting data procedure among grade 12 students from different schools in Guangdong.
Step 1: obtain institutional approval for use of study
Before we send the survey to the institutions, we will consult our supervisor in the first instance for guidance on ethical issues arising through our study. Also, the conducted of the survey is under the anonymous method. Approval is required All participation instructions and all subject informed consent agreements should be prepared, pilot-tested and finalized.
Step 2: Identify eligible schools and potential sample sizes
This step is completed approximately 1-2 months before collecting the data. The data is the aspect of the sample principal (name, address, title, etc.) and the number of students in each class. Since this is a school-based survey thus, we prefer to collect the data from the entire class of different schools. Before sending any information or letter of intent to the school principal, we need to investigate information about the number of potential participants in each class who will be asked to participate in the study.
We can get relevant information from the local statistical office or similar institutions.
Step 3: Contact with the identified institutions
About 3 weeks before the data collection, send a detailed letter about the planned investigation to the school principal and indicate the requirements: Allow anonymous data to be collected at the school, detailed research information: For example, who is collecting Data, how many participants are needed, highlighting the potential benefits of the survey and the results of improving the health and well-being of children and adolescents: Students who are more grateful to each other may reduce the student’s exam pressure and compensate the school (i.
e. nominating on research papers) Thanks to the school for assisting the research) as a way to provide meaningful thanks to participating schools. In addition, in order to collect data conveniently and efficiently, the principal should be asked to nominate a Supervising Contact Agent (SCA) in each school to be responsible for information about how the research team can best communicate with the individual (i.e. telephone, email etc.).
Step 4: Prepare survey materials for each eligible school
A list of all participating courses, including information on the number of students and the course label. This document will be very important when the completed questionnaire begins to return from the school to assess response rates and data cleansing. We need to prepare multiple documents to distinguish the data collected by each school, including all the information about each school and the number of registered students.
Step 5: Thanks for participating schools
Finally, once the survey is completed and all raw data questionnaires are collected, each school receives a thank-you letter within 2 weeks, thanking them for their help and participation in the survey. You can also invite the school’s SCA and principal to point out any issues that may arise during the survey’s plan or data collection process, and suggest improvements. When dealing with the questionnaires we receive, we need to handle each school very carefully because there are 400 raw data with tags. Since it will have a big impact on the whole study if the data is entered incorrectly,
Prediction
Based on above literature view and hypothesis mechanism. We predicted that dispositional gratitude is positively related to meaning-focused coping and negatively related to examination stress. That means if the students perceive higher dispositional gratitude scores, then they have better meaning-focused coping performance and perceive less examination stress. Gender may also play a role, female use more coping strategies than male across a varies behavior (Tamres, Janicki, & Helgeson, 2002)), thus female may perform better in meaning-focused coping than male. Moreover, there are huge disparity in educational resources between rural and urban areas (Sun, Dunne, Hou, & Xu, 2013); Different family social status affect the growth environment, parenting style and parent-child relationship (Sun, Dunne, Hou, & Xu, 2013), therefore, we indicated that student study in urban areas, live in a better social status and higher educational level family would perceived more positively.