Collecting Data Assignment

Collecting Data Assignment Directions:

This is a report, not a paper, and uses a template (below).

For this assignment, you are collecting data to support the research question that concerns your topic. Your question should be “How?” in nature and requires data and statistics for support. Use your writing process to form the right research question for you. Break down your topic and find an area that interests you most.

You are searching for data and statistics that will address the research question you developed on the topic and specific area of your choice.

The data you find may take the form of bar charts, pie charts or various ways to depict information visually and all at once such as flow charts, infographics of all types. All are fair game (This will flow into Part 2, the Multimodal assignment).

Note: You are not creating data here but rather finding and collecting and presenting it in your report and giving credit in your References.

Need: 7 total sources. To include: 2 think tank sources; 2 federal government sources; 4 various from GCU databases. Use in-text citation as necessary that links to your References page.

Length: 2000-3000 words. More than anything here, I am looking for seven clean, professional pages. This includes your data which might run two to three pages.

Follow the template included in the directions: Intro; Methods; Results; Discussion; Conclusion; Alternative Conclusion; References.

Introduction (What is the main question you want to answer? Why did you choose this subject?)
Methods (How are you collecting data? What materials are you using to collect it? What are the different contextual factors you will be recording in order to categorize the data?)
Results (What data did you collect?)
Discussion (What patterns emerge from the collected data? Are some patterns more valuable than others? What about the data that do not fit the patterns?)
Conclusion (What does it mean? What is the main story of the collected data and its patterns? Do the data and patterns tell other stories that help explain the main story? Why is it significant?)
Alternative Conclusion (Could the collected data and data mean something else? Is there another story that could explain the collected data?)
References

The resources below can help you in your research, particularly the Federal Government:

RAND Corporation:

https://www.rand.org/

Brookings Institute:

https://www.brookings.edu/

Earth Institute:

https://www.earth.columbia.edu/

The Heritage Foundation:

https://www.heritage.org/

Guttmacher Institute:

https://www.guttmacher.org/

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/

Federal Government Research:

www.usa.gov/statistics

www.usa.gov

GCU Databases:

Newspaper Source; link: https://library.gcu.edu/