Primary Data Analysis Report Answer

Background

The study is conducted to order to analyse the closure of Kingston school. The community is upset that they were not given a chance to weigh in on an important decision that will have big effects on their area. People in Kingston say that there has been talk that the school might have to close because the number of students is dropping, which has led to a decrease in the number of people living in Kingston. Even though there may have been good reasons for closing the school, the biggest worry of people in the community is that they weren't consulted when the choice was made.

The goal of this study is to find out if there are any changes in how people see things before and after schools close. A paper is given to people both before and after the school closes to collect information. The information is then put into the SPSS system so that it can be analysed. A key part of the questionnaire for recoding pre- and post-values is the attitude measure from the community poll. The questions in the community attitude poll are set up in the form of a Likert scale, with five possible answers that range from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree." When the data collection is done, the numbers are added up to get the pre and post totals. This gives us two variables that we can use to compare. When readings are taken before and after an event from the same people, this is called "paired data." The second part of the poll asks for demographic information that is only collected once but can be used for further research.

Hypothesis and Research Questions

The hypothesis of the research is as follows:-

H0: There is no difference in community attitudes between pre and post measurements.

H1: The community attitudes will significantly difference between pre and post-test on the community attitudes

Methodology

Method of inquiry

This study uses an experimental research methodology with measurements before and after the study. The solution is the legal notice that the school is closing that was sent out by the government. The goal of this study is to find out what people think and feel when they hear that a school is closing. This study could be called quasi-experimental because the variables of the study could not be controlled. But there are many ways that the methods of the investigation can be improved to make the results of the study better. By taking care of possible confounding variables, methods like randomization and stratification may help to reduce bias.

Research Design Improvement

Using randomization criteria makes sure that every person in the group has an equal chance of being chosen for the sample. In this case, it is thought that there isn't much bias in the data collected from the target group because the sample was made up of people with similar characteristics. Sarah put up signs in public places to help find people who might be interested in taking part in the study. People who are personally affected may be chosen, but this is not what scientific studies are mostly about. It is important to get a sample that is a good representation of the target community, and randomization can help with this. This is because it is often not possible to have everyone take part in the study. So, Sarah might have been able to find better ways to choose participants than just putting up signs. If not, the way of sampling would be random and limited to people who have easy access to the posters and see them. Given that Kingston isn't very big, it's possible that Sarah used an administrative register to pick people at random to take part in her study. After that, she may have gotten in touch with these people to ask them to help. By taking this method, the research would become more thorough, and the results would help us understand Kingston's thoughts and feelings better.

Reliability and Validity

If researchers have the intention of evaluating a construct that is thought to be consistent over time, then the scores that they get from the evaluation ought to be consistent over time as well. The extent to which an assertion is correct can be determined by the test-retest reliability. It is often believed that intelligence is a property that does not change with time. It is reasonable to anticipate that a person who is currently demonstrating high levels of intelligence will continue to exhibit those same high levels of intelligence during the following week. Therefore, it is possible to draw the conclusion that a trustworthy test of cognitive capacity must produce findings that are comparable for the same individual whether the test is administered at different times throughout their life. It is self-evident that a metric that, across a variety of time points, generates scores that are strikingly inconsistent with one another cannot be regarded as a reliable indicator of a construct that is anticipated to display continuity.

It is necessary to first administer a measure to a cohort of individuals at one point in time, then administer the same measure to the same cohort of individuals at a later point in time, and then examine the correlation between the two sets of scores in order to evaluate the test-retest reliability of a measure. The standard method entails plotting the data in the form of a scatterplot and determining their correlation using Pearson's formula. Figure 5.2 displays the connection between two sets of scores on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale that were given twice with an interval of one week in between each administration. These results were obtained from a number of college students. The statistics suggest that there is a positive correlation between the two variables, as measured by Pearson's r, which equals 0.95. A test-retest correlation that is equal to or higher than +.80 is typically considered to be indicative of a high level of dependability.

Data Analysis and Discussion

T-Test

Descriptive Statistics

In order to acquire qualitative data for this investigation, an interview with Dianna was conducted about the implications of the adjacent high school being shut down. Dianna and her husband voiced their respect for the parents and inhabitants of the neighborhood who take an active role in the educational pursuits of their children while they were speaking with me on the phone.

There are numerous different outcomes that are possible for the children in the event that their school is closed. Students may have a more difficult time concentrating on their studies as a result of the decision to close the school. When a school is closed, the students need to find a new location to learn, where they can meet new people and become accustomed to a new group of rules and expectations. According to what Martin and Dianna mentioned in their interview, if children have to travel further to get to school, it may be more difficult for them to attend class on a daily basis and maintain relationships with their family and friends who live in the immediate area. However, having a large number of new students in the classroom may be distracting for both the teachers and the students, which may result in a decline in the overall quality of their academic performance.

There are many potential reasons for a school to close, all of which ought to be taken into consideration on a regular basis. The majority of businesses are forced to close their doors due to a complex web of financial issues. In school districts where a large number of schools are not being fully utilized and where economies of scale are not being fully leveraged, financial hardships play a big role. According to the data survey, school districts might be able to reduce expenditures by shutting down schools that are not meeting performance expectations and investing the money saved into improving the quality of education offered by the remaining schools. Higher operational expenses can be attributed to the establishment of larger bureaucracies that require more employees, as well as the higher transportation costs connected with busing pupils over greater distances to consolidated schools. This results in higher overall operational costs. Even while eliminating rural schools might help bring the finances of school districts closer to equilibrium, doing so would be harmful to the economy of the surrounding area as a whole. According to the interview, parents are apprehensive about how this change will effect their children, and their children are concerned about being taken away from the schools and social networks that they are accustomed to. Affiliates of open schools can be concerned about the impact that an influx of new students will have on their programs. In spite of the widespread concerns over the outcomes of closing schools, the empirical research on the topic is still in its infancy at this point. There is a lot of evidence to imply that the moms in Kingston are worried about the weakening of community relationships that will occur as a direct result of the closing of Kingston High School. This fear is supported by the fact that the mothers in Kingston are concerned about the degradation of neighborhood ties. It was abundantly evident that the erosion of a sense of community was a widespread issue after listening to the many remarks that were provided by the participants during Martin's interviews with the mothers.

Conclusion

Since the middle of the previous century, school closings have grown increasingly common in rural areas as a result of the gradual replacement of older, smaller schools with newer, larger ones that are also more up to date. Over the course of the past half century, there has been a migration of people from rural areas to metropolitan cities, mostly as a consequence of the modernization of agriculture and industry, as well as mergers and internationalization. According to the interview, anger is the most common response that people have when they learn that a school will be closing, since many people believe that this will be a devastating blow to the community. The findings disprove a commonly held misconception about how closing schools will affect students' education. In rural areas and on tiny islands, where population decline is the primary challenge facing local communities, the closure of schools is a symptom, not a cause, of a dying society. This is especially true of rural areas and islands.

References

Pentang, J. T., & Pentang, J. (2021). Quantitative data analysis. Holy Angel University Graduate School of Education: Research and academic writing. http://dx. doi. org/10.13140/RG, 2(23906.45764), 1.

Samuels, P. (2020). A really simple guide to quantitative data analysis.

McLeod, S. (2019). Qualitative vs Quantitative Research: Methods & Data Analysis.

Mena, E., Bolte, G., & AdvanceGender Study Group. (2021). CART-analysis embedded in social theory: a case study comparing quantitative data analysis strategies for intersectionality-based public health monitoring within and beyond the binaries. SSM-Population Health, 13, 100722.

Denis, D. J. (2020). Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistics using R: quantitative tools for data analysis and data science. John Wiley & Sons.

Denis, D. J. (2020). Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistics using R: quantitative tools for data analysis and data science. John Wiley & Sons.  

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