08 Writing a quantitative report
In the lecture you looked at Du and Wong (2019) as an example of a quantitative report. This session will help you structure your writing for your own quantitative report in assignment 3.
1 Seminar Tasks
1.1 Activity 1: Proposing a question
Spend 10 minutes researching a problem (this can’t be extensive but find something that is flagged as requiring more research). Alternatively, you make already have a problem, in which case move onto the next step
State a rough research problem:
e.g., There is an imbalance in the number of students studying a-level biology (i.e., too few boys)
Turn the problem into a question:
e.g., What school features correlate with higher and lower level of male uptake of a-level biology?
Increase the specificity of the question:
e.g., In DfE school census data for the period 2017-2022 what school variables (including number of biology teachers, uptake of GCSE triple science, % of FSM students etc.) correlate with higher and lower level of male uptake of a-level biology?
1.2 Activity 2: Find a data set and check its applicability
- Use the list of open data sets to choose an appropriate data set
- Does it include all the data to answer your question? Which items will you use in your analysis? What form is the data you will use in?
- What form of cleaning will the data require?
- Will you need to draw on multiple data sets?
1.3 Activity 3: Decide on approaches to analysis
- What types of data are relevant to your questions (continuous, discontinuous?)
- What types of test will you need to run?
- What kind of descriptive statistics will be useful?
1.4 Activity 4: Sketch a research plan
- When will you finalize your question?
- When will you carry out your data analysis?
- When will you write up?
- What help will you need?
- How can you collaborate with peers?
- What R/SPSS/Excel skills do you need to acquire?