Week #14

This week we are finishing off the course and presenting our findings to the class. I am quite proud of the work we have done within the JFK L3GS group. Although we did not achieve a representative sample I believe that the data we collected does demonstrate some interesting aspects of student life at Richmond. Stress plagues most university students, and most at Richmond are dealing with the added pressures of incorporating themselves into a new culture. It would be wonderful to think that the information we were able to gather could help towards future recommendations for students. I have enjoyed seeing what all the other groups have discovered through their research although I do feel that there were some unfortunate broad generalisations made about Richmond students. I believe it's easy to make such assumptions between the data collection and data analysis stage. When forming a conclusion it is tempting to generalise in order to make more applicable statements but I have discovered that you must be careful to understand the limitations of your research before making these assumptions.

Week #13

This week we are working on revising for the final exam as well as preparing to present the findings and details of our group research projects to the class. Presentation of findings is an extremely important part of the research process as it is the way you can communicate your own ideas and input with the rest of the research community. We have done a lot of work this semester and I feel like we do have something important to show for it so it is essential that we get this across in our presentation. Having been working on the project for some time now it is difficult to approach it again from an outsider's perspective and thoroughly explain to a group of people who have no previous knowledge of our work what we have been doing the past couple of months. Although I am a bit worried that we have still not decided on one or two important conclusions (we are meeting later on in the week to resolve this issue) I am very sure that we all fully understand how we got to this point and why our methods worked so efficiently. We also are very aware as a group what we would change if we had the chance to start over again. Our good communication within the group probably means that we will be able to communicate well with people outside the group too and hopefully we will be able to provide helpful information to the rest of the Richmond population.

Week #12

This week we are wrapping up our group research projects and beginning to review for the final exam. To be honest I am still having trouble coming away from our investigation with any solid conclusions that we can put into our power point presentation or include in my personal project. I think I may need to spend more time with SPSS to discover some more patterns but I am worried that my group as a whole has not come up with any common ideas on what we can take away from all the data we worked so hard to collect and record. As far as revision, I feel quite comfortable with the overall concepts, I just need to work a little harder to understand how to apply them to specific instances. I also plan to spend quite a bit of time before the exam reviewing vocabulary because there are still some terms I am not quite clear on and I want to be able to express myself clearly through writing regarding social research.

Week #11

This week I was very much looking forward to moving on to dealing with the qualitative, instead of quantitative research. I find quantitative research quite impersonal even though it is much easier to deal with in terms of complication and interpretation. However, it can be quite difficult dealing with all those numbers and extremely tedious entering them into SPSS thanks to all the little technical idiosyncrasies that arose along the way. Having become more familiar with the program over the past week or so it was interesting to finally be able to formulate some conclusions from the data we have worked so hard to gather and record. Using the analyse tab we were able to create graphs, tables, and discover the mean, median, mode, etc. of our data. This meant we were able to notice some patterns in our research. For example, marketing and finance majors seem more likely to turn to drugs and female students are more likely to turn to shopping or entertainment than male students who seem to prefer socialising. These are only noticeable patterns and we have not formulated solid conclusions yet. Unfortunately I was absent for Thursday's class so I have not seen the results of the interviews that my classmates conducted but I found the results of my interview very interesting and surprising.

Week #10

This week we are dealing with the long and complicated process of recording and interpreting our quantitative data. This involves the use of the program SPSS which I find quite difficult to use even though I have some previous experience with it. Certainly it is useful in generating meaningful conclusions but the actual entering of data has been quite complex as we have six group members, each with different data that has to be entered separately. We could have perhaps made this simpler by entering all the data at once but has functioned well up to this point using the philosophy of division of labor. It seems that our collecting of data was quite efficient using this method; even though we have not received as many completed surveys from each major as we would have hoped we ended up with a vaguely proportional model of the Richmond undergraduate students. I hope this will help validate our results when we finally get to them! I am looking forward to qualitative data collection and analysis as I find this much more interesting and relevant.

Week #9

This week are getting down to the business of actually conducting our surveys and distributing them to our participants. To be honest I am finding this process quite stressful as I feel quite short on time and I am worried that I will not be able to fill the quota of surveys that I am supposed to ensure are completed for my group. I feel like we have worked very well as a group so far and the way we have divided up the work has made things easier and more efficient for everyone involved. We intend to do the same with the interviews, data entry, and transcription so I am hoping this process will go smoothly. I am also hoping that the issue of fulfilling the appropriate sample size will be sorted out eventually. I am worried that we may have to rearrange things after the data has been collected which I know will make things difficult. I am enjoying learning further uses for the SPSS programs as I have previously used it only for statistics classes. I have now realized that SPSS can be used for human benefit as well.

Week #7

This week we worked on revising our surveys, interviews, and the information sheets we are going to provide for our participants. The changes JFK L3GS made were mostly to do with language; clarifying what we are trying to get across to those who take our surveys or those we interview. We discovered it was best to provide options in lieu of open answered questions, especially in situations where we knew exactly what sort of answers we wanted. In some ways this will limit variation of answers but overall it will make our research easier to compile, comprehend, and draw a conclusion from. If we can't draw a solid conclusion then there is really no point to the project.
We also had to revise our information sheet. We previously approached this document as a way to draw potential participants into the project, spark their interest and make them feel at ease with the whole process. We tried to accomplish through humor and lighthearted language but were instructed that this might cause the opposite effect and make our possible participants not take the surveys or interviews seriously enough. In lieu of humor we turned to clear, simple, but not degrading language that will explain to those who have had no previous knowledge of our research project what exactly we are trying to accomplish. Hopefully this will motivate them to join us!