Friday, January 15, 2010

K1 Senior Seminar Students, blogging assignment #2 (March 24th)

It's that time again. Time to post your second blog-comment status update about the progress of your research. (Try to contain your excitement.)

You've all been working very hard, and the end is in sight. Hurrah! You should be done, or close to done, with your data collection and have begun to enter and/or analyze your data. Then comes the fun part! (Seriously.) Finding out whether or not your hypothesis is true, finding out the answer to your research question.

I look forward to reading your comments. As you did before, post them in the "comments" section of the blog.

20 comments:

  1. dear professor

    Iam certain that i will be doing my research paper on domestic violence. i will concentrate my topic on which; race DV occurs in the most?,and do children and economic class affect DV occurrences.

    I will be using content analysis as my research design method. I plan on using a number of articles from such newspapers as the new york times, new york daily news and the washington post. My key variables will be DV race, economic status and children. I plan on using random selection to narrow down my findings as well since i believe i will find thousands of articles.

    this is my plan as of right now.

    thanks your student harry theibault

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  2. Appropriate Analysis: quantitative analysis using SPSS. I gathered all my information and went to The Bureau of Justice Statistics website. I just wanted to know how to go about keying in the information. Tell me? Am I in the right place.

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  3. Since handing in my proposal I have fixed the mistakes that were listed. I tried finding some more variables for the research. I will still continue to use the existing dataset. I need to still plug in the variables and run the tests.

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  4. Finishing corrections from proposal and putting the variables that I chose from the excisting data set through SPSS. Once I have put the variables through the tests (descriptives, cross-tabs, frequencies, t-test, etc.) I am transfering data and tables, so I can write up a desciption of what the table is representing and if it correlates the dependent and/or independent variables. Once I finish the table section I will move on to the last two sections of the final paper, the findings and discussion sections to see if what I have found supports my research question or not.

    The hardest and most time consuming problem I'm having is determining which SPSS tests to use. I'm not exactly sure which are the best to use and some are very confusing to understand. I am using the How To Use SPSS book to guide me through the steps, but even with that I am having difficulties. I have tried multiple tests and several seem to give you the same results, just in different ways, while others I just don't understand. I'm not quite sure which variables to use with which tests. I know they are all going to have to be matched together, but I'm not exactly sure which test is better over another for certain variables.

    I'm hoping our next two classes will help answer my questions since we will be in the computer lab.

    Jason Morozowski

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  5. I did not have to make any corrections to my research proposal, so I have began taking the following steps to complete my final submission:

    1) download data
    2) lable my variables
    3) determining procedure to be used in preliminary data analysis

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  6. Since receiving my proposal back 2 weeks ago, I have begun to pull the necessary data from my existing data sets to build my own database system. I have also retyped my proposal and made the necessary corrections to turn in as my final paper.
    Tomorrow in class, I will begin to build my database is SPSS and begin running tests as required.

    ~Jessica Gilham Cirz

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  7. I have made corrections and chose new variables that relate more to my research question for my final paper. I am now ready to download my data into SPSS and start running some tests and frequencies. I look forward to the next class to help me out with the completion of my database.

    -Ryan Lawlor

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  8. I have chosen to do survey and focus groups. I ran into some problems getting the required amount of people due to it being mid-term week at the campus. I ended up surveying and recording the focus groups answers of 21 people, with a group of 4 people, a couple groups of 3 people, and the rest are groups of 2 people. I have typed up all my focus group responses into Word, which it is on two tapes as well. I will need some help setting up my skeleton for entering my survey data into SSPS. I also need further clarification for the rest of the process to make sure that I am doing it correctly.

    Richard Ozieblo

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  9. I have fixed my survey questions and also have printed out my consent form on the Kean letter head which I need you to sign. Even though I have not conducted any surveys and focus groups yet, I have lined up students from my classes to participate in my survey and focus group. Now since I have my participants it should not be long until I can start building my database after I have my consent form signed by you.

    John McNelis

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  10. Since meeting with you two weeks ago, I have downloaded four more data sets. I have corrected most of the errors in my paper but I still need to add the additional variables.

    Grace Hernandez

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  11. Good morning,
    Since discussing the proposal with you, I have made copies of the proposal as well as began work on the focus groups and survey questions. On the 24th I plan on determining how to convert the information into a data set.
    Matt H

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  12. Since meeting in the last class I have almost finished the required amount of people for the focus group. I only need to do one more group with about five people. The focus groups are going good and the participants are giving me great feedback. The only trouble I’m having is typing up all the responses. This process takes forever but I’m getting through it. Besides that, I’m right on schedule.

    Nick Starace

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  13. since we last meet I have corrected the mistakes on my proposal and I went to the computer lab to download my existing data into SPSS. I was similar to the homework assignment so it was not as difficult.

    Mike Rosetti

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  14. Since receiving my corrected proposal, I have finished my alterations and have begun to analyze data. While determining which SPSS tests to use was difficult enough, choosing the best variables seems even more so. I also debate whether my existing dataset is as relevant to my topic as I was hoping for. I am continuing on, hoping to prove that my original hypothesis is accurate.

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  15. Well apparently senior year of college isnt supposed to run smoothly. I know a lot of you are in the same boat as I am.. It is jsut so hard being a fulltime student trying to work full time. On top of all that my gpa is terminal all the way out in Chicago and Im starting a new job... How does all this relate to the paper? Its HARD to get EVERYTHING done.
    I am trying to sort through my codebook when I can and yet having some trouble determing all of it. Hoping to use the class time with Ms Hassett/Walkers help.
    Good Luck to all. This stuff is not easy...

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  16. hello professor, i have gotten all of my articles and read over them. I have also color coded all my variables and i believe i am ready to put in the data for spss however i have some questionson what variables i highlighted to be put in spss im hoping today you can help me figure that out professor thanks

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  17. Finding participants for the focus group turned out to be a little more difficult than I would have thought. Even people from my own class, also doing survey and focus groups said no they were busy when I asked them to participate. I found this odd because it was during the 3 hours we were supposed to be in class.

    Anyway, I finally got together 21 people for the focus groups and finished all of my surveys. the next step is the lab work which I will need some help setting up later today in class.

    - Gregor Thomas

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  18. I HAVE MADE CORRECTIONS TO MY PROPOSAL AND GATHERING MY ARTICLES FORA SAMPLE OF 100. i HAVE ABOUT 10-15 ARTICLES TO STILL FIND. mY NEXT STEP WILL BE TO INPUT MY INFORMATION INTO SPSS. i AM ALITTLE CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT TEST TO RUN AND HOW TO INPUT THE DATA INTO SPSS. hOPEFULLY THE NEXT CLASS WILL MAKE THINGS CLEAR.
    WE ARE HALFWAY THERE:)
    TIMISHA CEASER

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  19. SORRY FOR DELAY the blog totally slipped my mind, AS i stated earlier VERBALLY; I have made corrections on my paper, gathered all information needed, gathered all the amount of people needed for focus group and will be starting my first interview this week and my second hopefully before class number 2
    super excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  20. Sorry for the delay, I have been overwhelmed with a lot, as for my proposal,I have made the necessary changes as per your comments. I have also begun entering the data into excel so that I am able to copy and paste into SPSS. I hope that I am moving in the right direction with the data entry that has been a very tedious process. Just so you are aware this Research Proposal has turned me into somewhat of an alcoholic!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for the help Jes!

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