Assignment
Part II
In Part I of this assignment, you selected an urban "community" of interest to you and created a simple community profile based on your analysis of some comparative statistics that characterize your community.In Part II of the assignment, you are challenged to do a more critical, in-depth analysis of a narrowly-focused aspect of your selected community.
Start by asking yourself, what was the most interesting or most surprising finding of your preliminary analysis? What did your initial analysis of the data you selected tell you about your community that you didn't realize before? What surprised you about the community in terms of your previous perceptions? How did it differ from its metropolitan setting? How did it vary from or reflect larger demographic/socio-economic/residential trends in the U.S. as a whole? Were there data you couldn't explain? Were there questions posed by your data that you weren't able to effectively answer?
Assignment: Think like a social scientist...
The scientific method starts with observations that lead to questions. In this case, your observations about your community began with your analysis of the data that you selected (or with your previous knowledge of the community). In virtually every case, you found data that surprised you or data that you couldn't explain or data that contradicted your previous assumptions about your community. In other words, you found data that left you with questions (e.g. "Why didn't I know that before? Gee, that's not what I expected, I wonder why it's like that? I wonder why it's so different than the rest of the city/country?").
On the other hand, some of you found data that actually confirmed your previous assumptions about your community. In that case, you were essentially answering a question you'd previously asked yourself: you were simply confirming your answer with objective data (e.g. "My community is pretty wealthy and has good schools, right? Yep, and the data I found confirmsit..").
In either case, your work in Part I of this assignment basically took you to the next step in the scientific method: the formulation of a hypothesis. In your analysis, did you start with an assumption about your community or did you conclude with a possible explanation of the data you found-in other words, did you suggest a possible hypothesis? Even if you didn't put it in your written analysis, did your research begin with a hypothesis and/or end with you thinking about a possible explanation for the data that you examined?
hy-poth-e-sis; noun - hypotheses; plural noun a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation use the scientific method...
1) Make your hypothesis explicit. Go back to your initial data set and your analysis of it. What data stands out? Why? What is it about the data that surprised you? That proved your previous assumptions were correct? That demonstrated your community was similar/distinct from its surrounding metropolitan area...from the U.S. as a whole? Based on your reconsideration of your data, select a specific/single topic and formulate a hypothesis about your community. In some cases, your formulation of a hypothesis may simply require you to restate more precisely or explicitly a point you already made in your data analysis in Part I.
2) Now collect additional data to "test" your hypothesis. In the scientific method, we often think of hypothesis testing in terms of an "experiment." That may be the case in some of the physical sciences, but in the case of the social sciences, data testing often involves simply collecting and analyzing data-data that can come from interviews, from field observations, and/or from existing data sets like the census. For this assignment, your challenge is to determine what data sources you can use to best "test" your hypothesis.
When you've identified what additional data you need to confirm your hypothesis, collect it and put it into a format that will enable its analysis. In most cases, your data can be summarized in a simple table like you create for Part I of this assignment (for example if you're using additional data from the census). In other cases, you may need to write a paragraph or two summarizing your data (for example, you've collected descriptive data from newspaper articles about your community). And, in still other cases, you may need to include photos or some other type of visual data to support your hypothesis (for example, you're trying to demonstrate that the unique architecture of your community accounts for its gentrification and high property values).
3) Analyze your data. Concisely discuss and analyze your data. What have you found to support (or refute) your hypothesis?
4) Finally, determine whether you can accept or reject your hypothesis? Does your data analysis support or contradict your hypothesis and try to understand why.
- Your final product for Part II of this assignment should consist of a simple "research report" summarizing your findings. "Research reports" are a very specific type of scientific/technical writing and many disciplines and institutions/organizations have very specific formats for the presentations of such reports. For the sake of this assignment, you can use a short/simplified format as indicated:
1) Introduction - Briefly introduce your community and the specific question that arose from your research in Part I of this community study assignment. (1 paragraph)
2) Context and Hypothesis - Briefly explain what data led to your question for this assignment; state your hypothesis; and provide an explanation/rationale for your hypothesis. (1-2 paragraphs)
3) Research and Data Collection - Provide a short summary of what research you did and what "data" you collected and its source(s), indicating why you used the data and research methodology that you did. Provide appropriate citations-e.g. if you used census data, what survey/report/census did it come from, what date, etc.; if you used a real estate website, provide a link, etc.). (1 paragraph)
4) Data Analysis - Present and summarize your analysis of the data you've collected. If you used census data (or the equivalent), you can probably present your data in a simple table like you did in Part I of the community study and provide a concise verbal analysis of the table. If you've used historical information, you may need to summarize your data in written form. Be sure that you're presenting and analyzing data in the most meaningful fashion-presenting absolute numbers (e.g. the number of college educated individuals living in your community) often makes it difficult to make comparative generalizations (in that case, providing the percentage of individuals with college degrees would probably be easier to understand). If you're making comparative analyses, make sure you're using truly comparable data (i.e. data from the same census year, etc.). (2-3 paragraphs)
5) Conclusion - Repeat your research question and hypothesis, summarize your analysis, and provide a conclusion indicating whether your research supports or rejects your hypothesis and why. (1-2 paragraphs).
Attachment:- Korea-Town-Assignment.rar