Research and Statistics

1. Provide accurate explanations of information generated or presented in quantitative or mathematical forms (e.g., equations, expressions, graphs, diagrams, tables, and words) and describe this information in the context from which it is taken;

2. Analyze such information in order to make judgments, construct arguments, and draw conclusions in context, explain how these are supported by the quantitative analysis, and describe the limits of such analysis; and

3. Present this information in an effective format in support of a well-reasoned argument that addresses the context from which the information is taken

In my Quantitative Literacy course, the first half of the semester was our professor teaching us what Quantitative Literacy is and how to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources, as well as current types and methods in carrying out research. This consisted of extracting quantitative and qualitative data from different types of interviews and samples of reports based on perceptions that people have. Our task in the second part of the semester was to choose a research topic that my team members and I agreed on. My teammates and I chose to research and gather insight as to why STDs and STIs have stigmas surrounding them when anyone can get one, and there are a greater number of people who have them than one might think. Therefore, in order to show people’s perceptions of the different types of stigmas, we presented, in a statistical and quantitative way, data which later translated into a report, and is best shown in the two artifacts that I have chosen to upload. The first artifact is named Survey and Results STD: STI, and STD_STI Final Presentation is the second document. In these documents, people's responses were initially through qualitative feedback and translated, by my team and me, into quantitative data. The data shown in the PowerPoint and the word document show the results through graphs, pie charts, and words of people’s feedback in numerical form that was later written into a comprehensive report.

The next step that my teammates and I had to complete was turning this numerical data into a comprehensible report that is easy for anyone to read and gather insightful data from. Therefore, in the document labeled Qualitative Data Report STD Stigma, my teammates and I translated all the numerical data into a long but detailed report. In this report, there was quite an extensive amount of analysis conducted. Initially, we conducted secondary research which resulted in a 2+ page report that listed both qualitative and quantitative data. We then used the qualitative portion to develop a survey that was disseminated to the class. The results of the survey were used to develop quantitative data which inspired questions for our focus group. The discussion was recorded and transcribed which allowed us to highlight key terms thereby coming up with additional quantitative data. Each member of our team then had to find an Ithaca student (not in our class) to interview them with our own individual questions about the stigma of STDs and STIs. Finally, we looked at the individual interviews, focus groups, and results of our survey to compose a report which listed the 5 key themes of stigmas surrounding STDs and STI’s showing both the qualitative and quantitative data collected. The limits of this research project were that the sample size was too small to achieve meaningful results that could be interpreted globally.

In all of my uploaded artifacts, the information that we gathered is all there in one final report followed by a presentation. The facts that we gathered from our focus group, and each of the individuals that we had chosen to interview helped us assemble enough data to efficiently pull together a report with all of our findings through many types of figures including qualitative and quantitative. These two methods along with charts and keywords allowed us to analyze many forms of data and translate that into a report made to be understood by anyone, not just scholars.