To be honest, coming into Techniques of Computer Analysis I was skeptical because it is not an ordinary IS class. Statistical analysis has never been a strength of mine and that was visible from my first two quiz grades. For this class, I knew I had to work hard and ask more questions than I had done in previous classes if I wanted to understand why statistical analysis is used in political science.
My first problems came wehn trying to open SPSS. I am not sure how it is for Apple Computers, but for Dell there is an icon on your screen saver, but this leads to nothing. To access SPSS properly, one must go to their downloads folder and search for Student Version and this is where SPSS is located. This was a process to finally understand, but once I figured it out I never had a problem with it again. The first SPSS homework assignments were self-explanatory by Pollock. He showed how to manipulate data and what specific features of data you should look for when understanding its significance. The problems came back after my second quiz, unfortunately. At the beginning of the semester I did not know how to properly judge my time with school work, so I did not properly prepare myself for the first two quiz grades and I was pissed at myself because of it. This would turn out to be a good thing, though, because it made me go and meet with COL Sanborn frequently to discuss what we were learning in class and if I struggled in SPSS, how to better understand the homework.
In the middle of SPSS, we had to figure out what our group would do its project on. We decided that the correlation between sleep and academic success would be interesting at VMI because there is a set time lights have to be out every night and a set time to wake for morning formation. The literature review taught us a lot about what studies have already been done for this research question. It is very important to not only get sleep, but sleep well and not wake up through the night and that played a key role in our research. We also found that sleeping in too late can lead to poor academic performance, so we concluded that one should get a targeted 7-9 hours of sleep every night if they wanted the best results in the classroom.
My struggles with SPSS would return towards the end of our worksheets. The second to last homework assignment for SPSS was about Sommer’s D and Crammer’s V and this was the most challenging SPSS, I thought, we had all semester. The problems I struggled with the most was how the questions were phrased for this set of worksheets. For example, I never had a problem on earlier worksheets with which percentages to write down for my answers or which columns were asked to manipulated, but I struggled until I asked COL Sanborn what was being asked of me. Once I figured out which decimals to write down in the answer box, or which percentages I was trying to find, I ended up performing well on this worksheet.
The IRB application was another difficult task my group had to overcome for the project. We originally were going to survey 15 male cadets and 15 female cadets for a total of 30 cadets, but COL Sanborn did not think this would be indicative of the Corps of Cadets. The male to female ratio is 80/20 if not higher, so he wanted us to randomly survey more males than females. Another problem with our IRB was the survey itself. We originally gave GPAs that ranged from 1.5-1.8 and 1.8 to 2.2, but what if someone had a 1.8 GPA? We needed to adjust to this so that people taking the survey could properly circle which GPA range they had; in order to do this we fixed our survey to read 1.5-1.8 and 1.9-2.2, etc. The last challenge I faced for the group project was asking people to take the survey. We randomly selected rooms from the list of rooms in barracks and gave each person a full 24 hours to complete the survey. We found quickly that people blow off our survey, leaving us to find new people for this survey. We ended up with 27 out of 30 cadets completing the survey. This helped us conclude that sleep and GPA, at VMI, are not directly correlated.
My greatest gains from this class were how to properly know what data I should look for when completing research in a statistical manner. Any struggle I had, I would ask COL Sanborn and he would always lead me in the right direction. This class also taught me that it is important to collect data better in the future for any research question by becoming more specific with what to ask and who to ask.