High School Students “Talk Back” to the Anonymous Researcher Behind the Questionnaire

This paper discusses high-school students' perspectives on their participation in educational survey research. Students responded to a Likert-style questionnaire about their school’s social-educational portrait and were invited at its end to briefly comment on the survey itself. Qualitative analysis showed that a sizable proportion of students crafted emotionally laden relational responses addressed to the researchers, spanning a broad spectrum ranging from gratitude through skepticism to angry suspicion. For some students, interest in their school experience was very empowering, giving students a sense of recognition and of being heard. Other students showed discomfort with the quantitative survey as a research tool. The study argues for the existence of relational stances in quantitative research and suggests that these be taken into account in planning the research and interpreting the results.