Prompt 1 (p. 166): Doing Some Preliminary Analysis
I have not begun gathering data, but I can imagine the strategy of graphic depictions as being very helpful to me in beginning such an analysis. Since a number of the questions I will be asking will serve to distinguish between populations by sex and age, it would be helpful to be able to sort data by groups. For example, I will likely divide participants into groups based on census age groups: under 18, 18-24, 25-44, 45-64, older than 65. Each of those groups will have a group designating females and one designating males. A graphic depiction might help me better analyze the trends in responses among these 10 groups.
Prompt 2 (p. 171): Identifying Your Organizational Strengths and Weaknesses
I have never had any major difficulties with organizing my work in terms of data collection, presentation, or analysis. However, I do have major difficulties in situating data presentation and analysis within the body of an academic paper. The parts of a paper that I work a lot on often seem very organic to me and I end up in a chicken-and-egg situation, unsure of what makes sense as the first item of business. I think the approach we have taken in this class of writing our proposals in pieces will be very helpful to me in terms of organizing my final proposal. I know that I will have a research question to state first, and I will likely follow this with a literature review and then a methods section. Data analysis, if and when it happens, would logically follow this.
Erin Clark Frost 