Project Three Prep
Psychological and social topics are relevant to broad and diverse audiences. Not all individuals who use, or benefit from the use of, statistical information related to psychological and social issues are scientists. Given this, there is a need to communicate statistical evidence from the analysis of data pertaining to psychological and social issues in a way that is comprehensible to many stakeholders.
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is a universally recognized guide that offers insight into best practices for writing effectively and reducing bias. We have included some specific excerpts in Appendix B of the webtext that will help you use best practices when you communicate statistical evidence in Project Three.
Data briefs are a great example of taking large amounts of data and potentially complex statistical analyses and summarizing and presenting them in comprehensible and concise ways to reach a broad and diverse readership. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics has several great examples of data briefs that seek to fill this need in the communication of statistics related to public health issues. These can serve as examples as you construct a data brief for psychological and social issues.
Click Link: Products – Data Briefs – Homepage (cdc.gov)
Take the time to peruse a few of these data briefs to get a sense of how the information is conveyed. Notice how they are organized, often including the following:
· an introductory summary of key findings
· sections highlighting a few major findings with some additional discussion
· a summary to conclude the report
Also, notice the use of visuals to enhance the verbal and statistical messages. Paying attention to these details and getting a sense of the purpose and form of data briefs by reviewing some of these professional examples will help prepare you to complete Project Three successfully.
Competencies
In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competencies:
· Interpret psychological data using quantitative and qualitative methods.
· Present psychological findings to academic and nonacademic audiences.
Scenario
For this project, you will be creating a data brief. Developing the data brief will challenge you to not only interpret data correctly, but then communicate your findings to a mixed audience made up of members of the scientific community and the general public. Telling a persuasive and accurate story from statistical findings is an important skill to add to your data literacy toolbox.
Note: You do not need to perform any additional analyses or calculations. You only need to interpret and report the analyses that have been completed and create graphics as visual supplements for your data brief.
Imagine you work as a research assistant in Washington, DC, at the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is interested in issues related to race, discrimination, and policing. Your team has been given data and output from chi-square tests, and you are tasked with communicating the findings and possible implications directly to police departments. However, all the work you do is public and thus available to the media and community members, as well as to nonprofit organizations. As you weave together the story of this data, keep in mind that it will need to be written for multiple audiences and tell an accurate and persuasive story.
Directions
For this project, you will submit a data brief as a Word file. You will complete your brief using the writing templates on this page and the topic you selected in your Project Three Milestone assignment. Use the data set provided and the relevant contingency table to complete your interpretation of the chi-square test.
Note: You will find contingency tables that relate to each topic in the Excel file (provided as individual tabs).
Use the following template to complete Project Three.
WRITING TEMPLATE
Here’s the topic you chose in Project Three Milestone:
I choose racial discrimination. I selected this subject because we are seeing so an awful lot of this type of aspect in the news today.
Q1-Describe the key findings from your interpretation of the data for a general audience. Your response should be about 2 to 4 sentences. Include the following in your response: • Easy-to-understand statistical values (e.g., percentages)
A1
Q2-Summarize the background information for the scientific community. Your response should be about 3 to 5 sentences. Include the following in your response:
• Introduction to the research topic
• Credible background sources to support the introduction to the topic
Note: In Project Three Milestone, you reviewed credible sources to create your annotated bibliography. Use those credible sources in this section or additional credible sources if needed.
A2
Q3- Describe the major statistical findings for the scientific community. Your response should be about 3 to 7 sentences. Include the following in your response:
• An explanation of at least two major findings
• An explanation contextualizing the graphs you will include in the next item to ensure that the reader understands their purpose in the brief
A3
Q4-Represent the major statistical findings for the scientific community with graphs. Your response should include a graph for each finding to support your description. (Explain each step of how to do the graph)
A4
Q5- Provide a concise summary appropriate for a general audience. Include the following in your response:
• A restatement of why this research was completed and reminder of the key findings
• The application of the finding
