Prep for Social Networking Graph Analysis by Creating One Graph

Rationale: Demonstrate ability to find numerical data to support a position, and create a clear graph that communicates an idea clearly. Practice Excel graph making skills including analyzing a trend over time. Use quantitative analysis skills to explain the meaning of the numbers in the graph and draw the reader to clear conclusions about how the numbers support an argument that then supports your position.

Overview: Research databases to find a credible source with numerical data that supports at least one argument in favor of your position. Then create 1 graph in Excel to convey the numerical data in a clear manner. The graph needs to be clearly marked with titles and axis and well chosen chart type and y axis so that the information is visually accurate and easy to understand on its own. Click here to see how this week's assignment fits into your larger social networking project.

Here is a Sample One Graph Excel Worksheet . If you like to work from movies, here you can watch me create one chart from a source article .

STEPS:

1) Research to find numerical data that supports your position from your pro/con website.

Read this guideline for both finding your data and writing about it.

Look through the articles you have chosen to find a credible source that has numerical data supporting your position. To do this, read through the articles you have chosen looking for statistics, data tables or charts. If you find any of that, evaluate whether some part of that data (some numbers) can be used to create a graph in Excel.

• If you need to find your original articles, try this: (see a movie of these instructions here)
  • First just search for the article title on the internet, and you might find it. It might cost to read it though, in which case, continue to the next step.
  • Locate the database that holds your journal by going to the Adelphi's Database of journals inside databases and search for the journal name. See the database that holds the your journal for the year you need it. 
  • Go into that database by browsing to it. You can use Adelphi's Databases  to access by database name. 
  • Then search for the article name. Sometimes searching for the author is helpful as the title is not recognized easily. You can also try the advanced search to look for some keywords in the title plus the author's name.

If you do not have any numbers in the articles you chose, look for a few more sources to find some supporting numbers.

• This video shows you how to find statistics inside an Adelphi Database.
• If you cannot find data in a credible article, you can try Pew Research Center to search for an study, or try the sources mentioned in this article. If you use the Pew Research Center, you need to look at the full study and read about the methodology. Keep following source citations until you reach the source of the study that talks about how the study was conducted. This video shows you how to search Pew Research Center and find the full study.

2) Make sure you have the most detailed source of your numbers that you can find.

Why: You will eventually need to determine the scope of the numbers, so you will need all the details you can get about who was surveyed or what population your numbers represent. If it is a survey, you will need to know when it was done, what methodology, and the wording of the survey questions asked that relate to your numbers.

How: If you do not see detailed information on how the data was collected, see if you can find a citation or hyperlink to another source that might have the detailed information. Also, if a name of a study or institution is mentioned as the source, search the internet for that study or institution and start looking from there. If you cannot find any details, and it is not an original source that collected its own data, then your article might not be a credible source.

3) Analyze the numbers to figure out what they mean and which you want to graph

• Figure out what type of numbers you are looking at:
  • Be sure to look at how the numbers in your article are labeled. If you found a complex statistic, be sure you understand it, or search for another way to analyze the numbers.
• The numbers will be labeled, so start by checking the internet for an explanation of that label. For example, a rotated factor analysis would need to be understood and cannot just be converted to a percentage. You can go to the math tutors or to me for help understanding some statistics.
• If you can find the raw numbers of answers to each question, you can perhaps create a simpler comparison that you can understand.
• Figure out which numbers you want:
  • Determine whether you want to graph all the data or a small subset. A small subset is usually best for telling a story. For example if you had a table of answers divided into kids in different age buckets, you might want to concentrate on only a few buckets, or combine them to make the contrast more clear. You don't have to organize the data the same way your article did.
  • You will often find a list of qualities of the people surveyed. You usually don't want to graph that, because it just proves who was surveyed, not what they answered. It can be a supplemental (extra) graph but not your main graph.

3) Create an Excel spreadsheet to hold the data and the citation

• Type the citation into Excel so you have it for later. Don't worry about indenting properly but do format it properly.
• Copy in notes about the numbers you will want to use. If you copy direct text, put add quote marks and a page number.
• Type or copy the data you want to graph into Excel.
• If you need some help with getting from the article to a set of numbers to graph or making the graph:
  • You can watch me create one chart from a source article. in which I am creating this Sample One Graph Excel Worksheet.
  • Or if you are completely lost on figuring out how to pick out statistics from your article to graph, you can watch a very detailed video of me finding data inside the article and figuring out how it will support my argument

4) Create 1 graph in Excel to convey the numerical data in a clear manner.

• Even if your data was in a graph in your research, you need to recreate the graph in Excel on your own.
• Graph guidelines:
  • The graphs cannot be misleading, so a pie chart would need to be parts of a whole, and a bar chart would need to start at 0 and have parallel values and trend lines would need to have reasonable outer bound lines, and all data points must accurately reflect the numbers. Reread this article for an more information on these guidelines.
  • The graphs also needs to be clearly marked so that the information is visually accurate and easy to understand on its own, with a clear title and x and y axis labels.
  • Include the year of the information in either the chart title or axis.
  • Include the qualities of the people or subjects studied in either the chart title or axis.
  • Be especially careful when graphing percentages to convey the whole that the percentage is taken from.

5) Submit your work.

• This week you only have to submit the Excel spreadsheet. Later, this sheet will be the graph in your graph analysis assignment.

Grading Goals: