Assignment 4: Interpreting the Results of Data Analyses
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Instructions
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Instructions
Download and use the file HUB441 Assignment 4 to complete this assignment. For this two-part assignment, you will answer a series of questions about the results of an actual study. Read the case studies and answer the questions. Submit your answers in the Word document to Dropbox.
Part 1
Case Study: Rural and Urban Differences in Confidence in the Police
The data for this exercise come from the 2007 British Crime Survey. There were 2,958 respondents.
Descriptive Statistics
Answer the following questions:
1. What can you learn from the histogram above?
2. What do you conclude about the respondents from the table below?
Download the accessible table 1 transcript.
Interpretive Statistics
3. The research question posed for this study is whether people who live in rural areas have a different level of confidence in the police compared to those that live in urban areas.
4. What hypothesis did the researchers test?
The researchers used a t-test to determine whether the means of the two groups were statistically significantly different from each other. This is what they found:
Download the accessible Table 2 transcript.
5. What do you conclude from the results of this analysis?
6. How would you answer the research question posed by the researchers?
7. If this study were to be replicated today in the United States, what might researchers find?
Part 2
Case Study: The Experience of an Adult Learner Studying College Math
In some approaches to the thematic analysis of qualitative data, the researcher is concerned with developing and testing out a hypothesis or existing theory (e.g., Children find learning math easier when they use calculators), and many of the codes will be already known before the research begins. In other approaches, where the purpose of the research is to generate new theories (e.g., What happens when children are given calculators to learn math?), many of the codes are unknown at the beginning and are seen to “emerge” from the data.
A hybrid approach combines these two approaches: The researcher acknowledges that some of the codes will be pre-known because they are part of the project’s aims, research questions, or are questions asked in the interview itself, whereas other codes are unanticipated and will “materialize” or be discovered in the data itself.
Reading and Re-reading an Interview Transcript
The data for this exercise come from part of an individual, face-to-face, interview that the researcher conducted with an adult learner who was returning to college to study math—or maths, as those who speak British English say.
Answer the following questions:
1. Before looking ahead, suggest some themes that you might expect to see in an interview with someone in the learner’s situation. Why do you think it is possible to create some codes before you have even read through the interview transcript?
2. Read over the excerpt several times to see what themes/codes begin to “materialize” for you. Note them at the end of the transcript.
Jon: Last year when we were talking about this, you said that learning maths has made you feel more independent from your husband in a way.
Rija: Yeah, it has.
Jon: Because you always had to ask him before?
Rija: I did.
Jon: And now you can do things on your own.
Rija: He always thought he was better at it, he was so good at maths, but I find that I’m even better than him now.
Jon: But now you’re actually better then really, more confident, does that cause friction?
Rija:If it was his way, I wouldn’t even be here today and I wouldn’t be coming and he’s not even no longer living at home, in our family home.
Jon:Oh, I see, but not over the maths learning?
Rija: It’s not over maths itself, it’s just with me becoming more and more independent because I’m learning more, I’m educating myself, and I’m seeing there’s a world out there.
Jon: So, is it about power and control and he hasn’t got so much?
Rija: He’s watched me over the last couple of years from being just a mother and a wife to becoming a woman, I could say. I was always a woman, but I wouldn’t notice probably and now I’m becoming much more independent and eventually want to go in to work. I don’t want to be sitting at home forever just because he was working and I should stay that way and I should be at home, I want to be doing something with my life and I feel the only way I can do that, the best way, was to come back and get some education, get some qualifications and maths is a big part of that because I, actually, eventually, as much as I hate maths, want to go into banking or something and I just feel that’s what my aim is and I’m going to try and get there …. I feel like I’ve really moved forward and I’ve just done something with my life and I can give myself credit for that actually. I feel that if I can do something, you know it makes me feel like a person, you don’t feel alienated anymore. I felt like that. When I came back, it was a big world for me when I got back out, it’s like I’d been in prison maybe all these years, I don’t know where I’ve been, but I got here, I’ve made friends, I’ve met new people, I actually enjoyed maths for the first time in my life last year.
a. (Question 2 Continued): What themes emerged for you after you immersed yourself in the transcript?
The researcher wrote that:
After analyzing the 30 interviews in this project, I had well over 50 codes, and this can feel a little unmanageable. The next stage in the process of analysis is to begin to merge or group the free codes under broader headings, which are often known as “family codes.”
So, under the family code of Change you could have:
Independence
Relationships
Perceptions
Power relations
Domination/subordination
Identity
Meeting people
Confidence
Improvement
Grouped under the family code of Aspirations you could have:
To gain qualifications
To work
Grouped under the family code of Feelings you could have:
Achievement
Being trapped
Enjoyment
Freedom
Learning
3. Which of the individual, or free, codes under each of the family codes above do you believe characterize Rija’s experience?
4. What themes/codes that you identified for Rija are not listed above? In other words, what did the researcher miss that you found?
5. If two or more researchers used this approach with the same dataset, how similar do you think their findings would match? Argue both for them being alike and different. Does it matter?
The completed assignment should address all the assignment requirements, exhibit evidence of concept knowledge, and demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the content presented in the course.
When applicable, conduct a Turnitin pre-check and then upload your completed assignment and click the Submit to Dropbox button.
