Brians data analysis in Kingston School Closure - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages... Brian Alley works as a Policy Officer in the Department of Regional Development and he has taken leave from work to complete his Master's degree in Social Science. For his Master of Arts thesis, he has gotten approval to study how rural communities deal with the decline of public services He has chosen the proposed school closure in a town called Kingston to be his case study of rural decline. The proposed school closure is causing concern among local residents. Brian decides to do a quantitative study which includes conducting a pre and post-test of community attitudes, developing the attitude scale, trial testing the scale, conducting a community survey and data processing using SPSS. A total of 52 residents agree to take part in the study.The general question that Brian wanted to address in his research project was how rural communities deal with the decline of public services. To be able to address this, Brian formulated sub-topics to form the basis for his project. These are: the status of rural decline in Australia, the impact of school closures on rural communities, alienation in rural communities, design of the study, methods of data gathering and analysis, political and economic factors influencing the proposed Kingston school closure, response of Kingston residents to the proposed closure, effects of the Kingston school closure and implications of the case of the Kingston school closure on rural Australia. ...
ganup high school, 4) age of the youngest family member, 5) number of years of residence at Kingston, 6) occupation of the family member with the largest income, 7) whether or not a residential/boarding private school would be considered if the Kingston school is closed and 8) perception about the standard of education for Years 8-10 at Kingston. Additionally, Brian designed a community attitude survey with its related alienation scale and did pre and post survey using the instrument. Data gathered regarding the factors plus the pre and post attitude survey results would have bearing on the study on the impact of school closure on rural communities, alienation in rural communities, political and economic factors influencing the proposed Kingston school closure, response of Kingston residents to the proposed closure and effects of the Kingston school closure.
If I was conducting the research myself, I would follow Brian's method as he had done it as well as conduct a parallel qualitative study as Peggy was doing.
Key Steps in undertaking Brian's Research Project.
Brian implemented a series of steps to conduct his study. He first went to Kingston to collect the town demographics. He also managed to review local newspapers where letters of concern from residents have been published related to the proposed school closure. A month later, Brian visited Kingston again and talked with local officials and townsfolk. He also conducted interviews. First, Brian interviewed Harold, the deputy principal of the school to find out the impact of school closure on school communities, particularly that of Kingston school's academic staff and parents of students. Next, he interviewed Dr Foster, an education department director to find out the effect of school closure in rural ...Download file to see next pagesRead More