Quantitative Data Analysis: The Impact of Ethnicity on Education - Research Paper Example

Introduction Nowadays, education is considered as key in ones development socially, economically and culturally. Education had been termed as a vehicle to take any country, any person or any ethnic group a notch higher. According to Flores, G et al. (1999), education is the hinge connecting each and every individual to the modern world. However, to him, some ethnic communities/groups still lag behind the others in terms of education level maybe due to the fact that they have little regard of what it can do to them or have never heard its goodness. All in all, education has impacts on education. Review of literature Ethnicity has its impacts felt in many aspects. In education, ones ethnic group determines a lot whether the individual will have a future or not. In some ethnic groups, education is relegated to a far position when one rates other things (Zeichner, K., & Schulte, A. 2001 p. 251). Education in such cases is viewed as being not important at all. According to Flores, G et al. (1999), despite its importance as a hinge to all and every aspect in life, it is viewed by some ethnicities as passage which is not a must for one to undergo. In some African societies for example, education is a thing un-heard of and parents don’t consider taking their children to school. According to Skaggs, M. C. (2001), some ethnic communities have the will to have their children in school, however, the aspect of little finances which they get hinder them (p. 41). Skaggs argues that, if all ethnic communities in diverse countries are given equal opportunities to that accorded their peers from other ethnic communities, then the probability that, they will also attain some grades in very high. To him, lack of proper representation in education institutions of middle and higher learning is not because of their liking but because of the situations they find them selves in (p. 48). The marital status of a parent is another aspect which leads to low education levels. The institution of marriage is one of the conducive environments where education can thrive well. To Stephens, J. (1999), minorities in the US and other developed countries suffer a lot since most of their parents are single parents and lack the will to educate their children (p. 31). To Stephens, a single parent faces the problem of educating since he/she is the sole breadwinner and with the cost of education soaring high, the possibility of educating is dim (p. 33). To Su, Z. (1996), the level of one’s education determines what he/she will earn after the completion of education. According to him, this should act as a driving force for one to aim at succeeding in education. For example, some one who has attained the level of university has high prospects than he/she who has none. To Su, some minority ethnic groups fail in this aspect since they have not encountered any one who has gone higher in the education ladder and thus have no feeling of how good it is to go a bit higher. Hypothesis In view of the above assertions, some hypothesis were formulated as below, Hypothesis 1 Ethnicity has impacts on education Hypothesis 2 Black-Caribbean origin are less likely to have A’ levels than those of other ethnic groups Hypothesis 3 The institution of marriage is highly valued in almost all the origin groups Methodology To ascertain whether the above is true, a questionnaire was developed with the help of experts to collect data and analyze it. Some 928 respondents were selected to take part in this research study. The questionnaire used to collect the above information had parts different parts; It had a part on the respondent’s gender, Respondent’s age, Respondent’s income, His/her education level, His/her ethnic origin, and His/her marital status. Data analysis To aid in analysis, the three variables, Gender, Age and Income were coded as below; Gender which was a nominal variable had the following codes, 1 Female 2 Male -9 Missing value The respondent’s age had its level of measurement being Mode; those with the highest representation among the respondents. Age which was an ordinal variable had the following codes, 1 under 16 years 2 16-25 years 3 26-35 years 4 36-45 years 5 46-55 years 6 55+ -9 Missing value (for those who did not give out their age) Its measurement levels were the mode, the median, the minimum and the maximum. Income was an interval variable and had the following codes, 1 0-14,999 2 15,000-24,999 3 25,000-34,999 4 35,000-44,999 5 45,000-54,999 -9 Missing value (for those who did not give their income level) Its levels of measurement were the mode, the mean, the median, the minimum value and the maximum value. Education level had the following categories; degree or equivalent, LT degree higher G, GCSE A level, GCSE o level, CSE GR 2-5 equivalent, foreign and none. Marital status had; married, cohabiting; single, windowed, divorced, separated and same sex cohabiting as its categories. Ethnic origin had; whites, black-Caribbean, black-Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Chinese and others as its categories. The data was then entered into a computer and analyzed using SPSS. The results follow below, Results Table 1 From table 1 above, it is evident that 925 respondents responded to both issues of marital status and ethnic group one comes from. However, 3 respondents failed to give responses to both issues. A 99.7% representation is un-biased for the two issues. Table 2: Cross tabulations of Ethnic origin and marital status The table above confirms that, the institution of marriage is highly up-held in all ethnic groups. 54.9% of the total population of the respondents are married. Among the whites, black-Africans, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, the married respondents form the highest representation. Black-Caribbean’s, Chinese and other ethnic groups have the majority representation as singles. The whites and the Pakistanis value marriage than any other ethnic representation. Table 3: Chi-square test Table 3 above is a chi-square test table with a Pearson Chi-Square value of 47.972 with 42 degrees of freedom. The value is not significant at 95% level of significance since p>.05 (p=.244). The two variables have no linear relationship with each other since their linear association has a value 2.667 which is not significant. Thus, although almost all ethnic groups value marriage, there is no linear relationship between both variables; one cannot be used to explain the other. Table 4: Symmetric measures On the symmetric measures, the two variables have a Phi value of .228 which is not significant at 95% level of significance. Likewise, the Cramer’s V value is .093 and is also not significant at all. Both values have a p-value of .244. Table 5: Cross tabulations of education level of the respondent and the ethnic origin From the table above, most of the respondents have not attended any education institution with 31.3% being in this group. 30.9% of the whites, 66.7% of the black Caribbean’s, 53.8% of the Indians and 100% of the Bangladeshi form the majority of those who have none in terms of education. The Chinese and the whites have the majority of those that have attained a degree or its equivalent. Also from the table, the Chinese are more likely to attain A’ levels in education with 50% of their representation lying in this category. On the other hand, black Africans and the Bangladeshis are less likely to attain A’ levels. All in all, the two ethnic origin groups are less likely to attain high levels in education despite the level. In terms of consistency in education, the whites are the best and most of them attain a certain level and about 54% have education above O’ level. Thus, from these results, the hypothesis that, Black-Caribbean’s are less likely to attain A’ levels in education is rejected. This is so because, the analyzed data shows that, rather, black-Africans and the Bangladeshis are the two ethnic origins which are less likely to attain A’ levels. Table 6: Chi-Square Tests The table above (table 6) shows that, ethnic origin and the level of education are related. In other words, the ethnic group one comes from has a significant impact on the level of education one attains. The Pearson Chi-Square value is 118.142 with some 42 degrees of freedom. Its p-value is .000 which is Read More