HO LLY COW!

one school sent me 103 initial questionnaires and i just got 95 final questionnaires from them today. now, this is THE school that was the most careful with asking students to answer ALL the questions, especially the personal stuff like birth date, birth place, etc., and it still took me almost FOUR HOURS to match those initial and final questionnaires! i did it by language, and then by country (with spanish speakers) and gender and birth dates. there were some new participating students, and some students who didn't participate the second time (but not many), but overall, i was able to match most of the questionnaires. the hardest ones to match were the arabic ones, because they would write their birth date in arabic once and english the second time, or use the christian calender once and the muslim one the second time, for example... so there were several questionnaires that i was unable to match and i'll have to go back and finish it with my date and arabic translators which i didn't have with me this afternoon.

there were also a few problems with people being unclear on things, like they wrote the date once but not the first or second time, or they mixed up the order of the date (9/5/81 vs/ 5/9/81)... and also the one who said he was from colombia once and from chile the second time. i'll never thank enough the psych teacher who told me to add the birth CITY to the questions, since this person was obviously born in one country but raised in another. by the way, these cities were often inconsistant and i could tell that often, the student would once write the closest large city that everyone knows (like i would say i am from paris), and the other time, they would write the actual name of the place they were born in (boulogne-billancourt, for example, a very close suburb of paris) (but i was REALLY born in paris, in my case).

practically 4 hours, for 95 questionnaires! and that's the school that was the most careful with dates and all! i hope veronica's going to help me when we get more questionnaires in, otherwise i'll lose my sanity very soon!

i have a practice job interview on monday. need to work on that!