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The course end project is worth 14% of your final grade. It is a mini-research project in which you are to conduct research using some form of archival data. That is, data that is available in the public domain and does NOT require asking anyone anything. In other words the data has already been collected. This project includes justifying why you would ask the question you are asking, conducting the actual data compilation, statistically analyzing the data, and explaining what you found. These are the basic components of a research project introduction with hypothesis, method, results, and discussion. It should be double-spaced, in APA or MLA styles, and should be 8 to 10 pages long. Here is a brief summary of what each section of this paper should include:
Introduction (worth 2 marks)
A brief but clear statement of what data you are collecting. Also include why you are collecting it. It could be for personal reasons, and that is fine, but it should also include at least two scholarly references on why this information is important to understand. These references must come from peer-reviewed scholarly journals and not from the popular press. You must also state your hypothesis about what you expect to find. This should also include a null hypothesis.
Method (worth 3 marks)
Your method of data collection must involve at least two explanatory variables, and must contain archival data, that is, data which has been collected by others and is offered in the public domain. Or data that is easily counted or compiled as it is in the public domain. Where did you find your data? Be sure to give specific URLs, newspaper dates, physical addresses, or whatever is relevant. And include the date or dates when it was collected. Also include how you went about collecting this information: Did you count something? Did you record instances over a period of time? Did you content analyze the text? Your degree of specificity in this section should be so that someone could actually replicate what you have done.
Results (worth 6 marks)
Here you are to present the outcome of your data collection. First you need to provide the actual data in a table format. You should also do descriptive statistics on the data. This should include:
Five number summary
Mean, median, mode
Standard deviation
You must also include either a chi-square analysis of your data (if it is categorical), or a correlational analysis (if it is continuous). You must show your mathematical calculations here and give the p-value of your findings. Depending on what data you gathered, it might make more sense to do more than one of a test or both tests. Be sure to graph your results in at least one—but preferably more than one—figure, which are appropriate to your data.
Discussion (worth 2 marks)
Here you explain verbally what you showed in the results section. Did it fit your hypothesis? Why or why not? How does it demonstrate and/or contradict the findings of the related scholarly research you found—and why? What were the limitations of your research study? Was it all one sex? Were there too few data points? Was there a cultural bias?
References (worth 1 mark)
Here you should put the two scholarly sources you found and talked about in the introduction and the discussion. They must be offered in either APA or MLA styles as these are the styles used in Communication Studies.
There are some major data collection websites that allow you to examine various population questions. These include StatsCanada and in the United States, Current Population Survey. You can request data on many topics and get the information in table form.
Question:
What are the hockey scores of your two favorite teams when they played at home versus when they played away? The two explanatory variables could be type of team (Canadian versus US) and where the games were played (home versus away). The response variable would be the scores in each category of the explanatory variable.
