My semester of taking what I thought would be the most difficult class because of the mundane detail in the new frontier of SPSS, ended in a reality that juxtaposed my initial expectations. Upon registering for the class, I was nervous that I would get lost in the data, numbers, and foreign functions of this class. I was used to looking at the graphs, not creating them myself. I was never number inclined so the thought of having to code and work within SPSS was incredibly daunting.

I was reassured however, once we started working through the worksheets and I found myself more comfortable with the keystrokes, doing it by memory rather than step by step with the screenshots. This was amazing considering I never expected to be comfortable with data manipulation. I loved the end result of looking at tables comparing variables side by side, but never thought I could be the one running cross tabulations. With this work within SPSS=came a better understanding of key political science research terms and concepts. For instance, although I have studied it almost every year since 8^th grade, I always had a hazy understanding of the null hypothesis. That is, until now. After manipulating data on my own and navigating the research model and process, I finally had a coherent understanding of the null and why/how we use it. I believe this only occurred because of the first-hand work that I was doing in this class. The same goes for conducting research.

I was very comfortable talking about research cases and could rattle off the key and chronological steps of experimentation. I could analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of data collection, ie. Survey, interview, case study, observation, but I had never done it on my own. I didn’t expect it to be that different. I was very wrong. It was hard at first to even find direction with our research question. We fumbled around with possible topics and then once deciding that, fumbled around with the syntax of our question. I never knew how much time and energy went into writing the very specific and deliberate research question that would guide our study. Although we finally settled on our wording, I am sure we could have spent more time making sure it was stated as clearly as possible. The next hurdle was the data collection. We spent a good amount of time and energy thinking about how we can best collect our information. It was important to us to try and get a large enough sample size that was random and diverse in representation. Rather than just sending out an email survey that would get a possibly skewed representation, we did a random number generator with three companies and selected a specific number from each class. As I delivered surveys door to door, my main concern was confidentiality, not because I thought my Brother Rats would feel uncomfortable sharing basic school related information, but because I know how important this component is in scientific research. It was painstaking at points, walking laps around barracks in the cold, but it was important to see what really goes into conducting research.

Over the summer and while spending last semester abroad, I thought it would be interesting to conduct my own professional research after law school. I thought of how I would collect data, reusing government published data and figures or how I would conduct interviews and surveys to gather the most authentic information in sensitive places like China. This class has opened my eyes to how that could be done on large and small scales. My creative mind has some pretty outlandish research ideas bouncing around within it, and it was interesting to see if they could make it through a semester of computer analysis. One of my questions in particular had to do with personality traits and preferences in using a public restroom. Generally, I believe people have a tendency to always use the same stall or sink, maybe even specific enough as the same soap or paper towel dispenser. I always wondered why some people chose the outside while others chose the middle. I know this seems insignificant and absurd, but I found it interesting to bring up to friends and thought it had to do with dominant personalities or more insecure tendencies. This class has helped me look at ideas such as this, and consider how I would go about setting up an experiment, the feasibility of data collection, and how I would code it. I do not think I will ever pursue research in this specific subject matter, but if I did, I would know what to expect of the process and be better equipped. I am thankful for the exposure, greater understanding, and confidence this class has given me.

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Reaching our final research question was certainly not a seamless process. We moved in circles and tangential lines before ending where we are now, theorizing that individual discipline within the Corps is based on your company and the group norms and culture that are created within it. Lower ranking companies have less strict rules or a more lenient standard and therefore have more PT offenders. For example, Alpha is lower in the Corps order as displayed by lower Garnett Andrews scores and we would expect Alpha to be marching more PTs than Echo or Delta, companies who usually win Garnett Andrews and have the reputation of intense discipline.

Where we foresee issues is in dealing with outliers, collecting enough data, and making sure our logic is fluid. In troubleshooting conversation, one group member pointed out that a company with lower standards would bone less so the cadets within it would not be marching PTs. That is for excess demerits at least! Lack of boning at morning inspections is not enough to say a cadet is disciplined if there is much greater offenses that are handled by Comm Staff who delivers the punishment. Questions in our survey will make that distinction.

I hope once we push out the survey and get more feedback from you, we will feel like we are moving along in the right direction.