Validating a Weekly Survey to Understand Student Division of Roles in Physics Labs

In introductory physics laboratories, students typically work in groups where they divide and share different roles to complete assignments. Data on student participation in these different roles within groups help assess equity in labs. However, little work has investigated the division of these roles week-to-week with class observations as it is a time-intensive process. To address this, we designed a closed-ended survey delivered weekly during lecture to measure student perceptions of their involvement in various roles. Specifically, we asked students about the extent (i.e., led, worked with other students, helped but someone else was in charge, or not/barely involved) with which they used equipment, analyzed data, took notes, and managed the group. We compared survey responses to two sessions of class observations and found that student responses can tell us how much time students spend in each role. While observations were aligned with responses for leading, sharing, and barely working on a role, the observational differences were not so clear between the sharing responses (working with other students and helping but not in charge). These survey responses allow us to obtain information that may not be easily seen in classroom observations and will be used in the future to study equity issues in role division.