The Facts

While this project is challenging and often quite stressful, you should know that Professor Stull is always available for advice and encouragement. At the first sign of a potential delay to your progress, pay him a visit and you will be back on track in no time.

The work itself is very manageable and I would recommend starting relatively early, at least on your sampling. Once you have collected and entered all of your data, the next most time consuming part is the chart making and calculations of variables. A neat Excel document will come in handy when comparing variables. I recommend saving copies of your raw data in a separate document entirely, should you do irreversible damage to your spreadsheet.

The project can be done alone, but I suggest choosing a partner to split up the tedious tasks, which can often take several hours. On average, my partner and I needed two hours for every 40 samples we collected. If you wish to have a large sample size, you and your partner should split up and do the sampling separately. Also, when it comes to analyzing data and graphs, partners can be extremely helpful as they often see things that you might have overlooked.

Make sure your questions prompt numeric answers. Qualitative data has its place in this project, but the bulk of your calculations will rely on numbers. Additionally, Excel hates qualitative data. I rue the day that I put yes and no into cells.

Before you make any rash decisions on what you would like to study, make sure you are passionate or at least somewhat interested in what you will be working on for several weeks. An interesting prompt makes the time fly by and in the long run produces more satisfying results. 

Advice for Future Students

The best advice would be to start surveying early... as soon as the final draft is complete. Survey a bit at a time; don't try to tackle the whole sample at once. Also, input your data into excel as you go, don't wait for a 3 hour chunk of time to do it all at once, especially if you want a sample of 100+ people.

Find a partner with equal excel skills as you. Your time spent on the project will be used much more efficiently that way. If you both don't know how to use excel, you can learn together. Otherwise, if one person is better than the other, the highly skilled person will spend more time teaching the other person how to use excel than it would take to do it alone.

If you know how to use excel well, and can't find a partner with equal excel skills, don't be afraid to tackle this project independently. As long as you start surveying early, and in chunks, you will be fine! :)

Future studies:
-Other alternatives for food on campus besides Delux Esto (formerly known as stacks) and Biggby.
-Top stores around kzoo
-Which stores should be closer to campus, farther away
-Typical transportation methods and frequency
-Spending vs working of work study students vs non scholarship students
-Is the bar experience better than staying in with friends

Project Advice

The best advice I could give to future students doing this project is to simply start right away and aim to get a sample of over 100 people. (We physically went to 109 people.) If you're wondering how you can get an A, besides a good write-up and correct equations at the end, getting a large sample shows how much effort you truly put into this project.

An interesting topic I'd like to see covered in a future statistics project would be: What factors go into the ideal college party? This could be something interesting. I'd love to see how the K community responds to something like that.

Advice

The main advice that I would give to a student taking this course would just be to stay on top of the deadlines Chuck gives you. They are easily doable and if you follow them you won't be overly stressed by the project. Also doing a survey on how satisfied students are with their colleges would be an interesting survey (assuming you can get data from other colleges).

The Future of the Labor Movement in Trouble?

A study regarding current college students’ views and awareness of workers’ rights and labor unions occurred last week in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  About 57 students from the small, private liberal arts college participated, the majority of them (66.96%) believed that unions are an important force in society.

Students were given a statement and were asked to share their opinion from strongly disagree to strongly agree in a scaled response fashion.  The sample size was randomly selected by courses: Spanish, Mathematics, and a History class, and course level: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. 

Logic dictates that student majors who are immersed in Business and Economic courses would have a different perspective of unions than majors in the Social Sciences.  According to the study, there was no significant difference found between union favorability and major.  Both majors were found to have similar opinions regarding unions. 

On the other hand, significant data was found that female students have higher positive union attitudes than male students.  The average score for a female was 49.82 percent and that of a male student was 43.92 percent.  After accounting for the sampling error the data was still found to be reliable.  Therefore the idea of females and males having the same union attitudes can be rejected and that their opinions vary can be assumed.

Not only are college students today the future of the labor market, but also the future of labor unions.  Teenage and young adults in college are in a crucial period of transformation in their lives, as they develop their knowledge and opinions about the real world, they become closer to make a life of their own. 

With an averaged response of “neutral” to each particular statement on the questionnaire, it seems like labor unions have some educating to do.

K Student Textbook Spending

A study on students from Kalamazoo College and their textbook purchasing was recently conducted. The study focused on the methods students used in purchasing textbooks for one quarter, and their satisfaction with these methods. The students studied were randomly selected from every grade.

Results of the survey included 91.18% of students purchasing books, and of that percent 83.87% of the sample purchased from the K College Bookstore, and 70.97% using an online retailer. Although more students purchased books from the college bookstore, the average price spent on textbooks at the K College Bookstore was $131.67 as opposed to $98.95 using an online retailer. The difference between these averages is $32.72. Another interesting question asked was the students level of satisfaction with the market they chose to buy from on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best. The K College Bookstore's average satisfaction was 6.17, while the online retailer's average was greater at 7.92.

In conclusion, many students appear to be using online retailers, and they're saving a good amount of money doing so. Additionally, the student's satisfaction in using online retailers is on the higher end of the scale as opposed to the K College Bookstore falling just above a middle, mediocre satisfaction level. Students can learn from this study that they can save some money through purchasing books online, and most college students definitely need whatever money they can get.

Athletes, specifically field athletes, support $16 million fields project

A recent study undertaken by two Kalamazoo College athletes sought to understand the relationships between various characteristics and opinions of the the new Kalamazoo College fields project. The study, consisting of 12 core-questions and distributed to 80 random students compared gender, class year, hours of exercise per week, hours of sports on TV per week, athletic contests attended in Fall '12 and whether or not the student was an athlete to what was called a 'positivity index'. This index was established to determine an overall opinion of the fields project.
The study indicates that it is quite clear that athletes have a more positive opinion of the field complex than non-athletes do; a result that is unlikely to shock many. Furthermore, the study indicates that the direct beneficiaries of the fields project, field athletes, are significantly more supportive of the decision to spend $16 million fields project than are athletes who's competitions are confined to Anderson Athletic Center.
Contrary to expectation, additional findings from the study indicate that there is little to no difference in opinions project between genders and class years. Additionally, there seems to be little relationship between how much a student exercises, watches sports on TV or attends K-College athletic events and overall opinion of the field project.
The overall impact of this study is yet to be determined. However, with many future plans for athletic renovations, the Kalamazoo College administration will need to continue catering to athletes while doing their best to get non-athletes engaged in the eventual renovations of the fitness center, natatorium and gymnasium.