Term Project

I.     TERM PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

1. Selecting your Topic

1. Your term project will be based on conducting primary research, preferably college-related or on your place of employment, and follows the acronym DCOVA

2. Select a topic of interest for which you will gather quantitative data using a questionnaire:
3. At your College, a topic is your broad underlying unit of study: First-year college students. You are interested in their tuition Costs, cost of textbook/ online material, Grade Point Average, and incomes.
4. At your place of employment, your topic may be minimum wage rate; hours of work, promotions, etc.
5. Identify the issue. An issue is stated in the form of a question about your topic. Usually, it describes the relationship between two of your topic variables. Assume that you have identified costs of tuition for first-year students as something that is of concern to you. You believe that the costs of tuition are too high, in relation to your annual employment income, and hence your GPA.

An issue can be formulated as follows:

1. Do the relative costs of tuition affect First-Year College Students Grade Point Average?
2. An evaluation of the cost of textbooks (??) on First-Year Students GPA

You can state your title based on either of the two ways described above. Research is about defining your problem, and then gathering data to resolve it.

1. Theoretical Section

Identify the dependent and independent variables. Explain how each of the independent variables influences the dependent variables by making reference to three scholarly articles.

EXAMPLE:

Theoretical relationship

1. Grade Point Average (GPA) refers to the cumulative GPA at the end of first year of College. Existing literature shows that there is a positive relationship between GPA and the number of hours of study. Offer Reference.
2. Relative tuition cost: As tuition costs rise relative to income, students may spend less on textbooks and preparation time may decrease. Hence, GPA and relative cost are inversely related. Offer reference(s)
3. Research Question:

Is there a relationship between GPA, hours of study and relative tuition cost?

1. Questionnaire Design: SUGGESTED Design

Appendix 1: Year 2017 Average Income: Either at your College or place of employment:  Questionnaire

1. D. Data Collection

You will collect data on 25 students for three variables:

1. Tuition costs
2. Annual income
3. GPA

Relative tuition cost, in this study, is the ratio of tuition cost to annual income. The higher the relative cost, the more likely students will spend less on textbooks, and hence their GPA will decrease. So, there is a negative relationship between GPA and relative tuition cost. GPA is your dependent variable and the independent variable is relative tuition cost.

Table showing data for 25 students

1. GPA: Grade point average of end of first year student.
2. II. Variables that may influence GPA: hours of study; relative cost; relative textbook cost.

The table shows the dependent variable (GPA; independent variables (Tuition Costs/Income), Textbook costs).

1. Term Project

Your term project will be based on conducting a primary research, preferably College related or your place of employment and follows the acronym DCOVA

4. Select a topic of interest for which you will gather quantitative data using a questionnaire
5. At your College, a topic is your broad underling unit of study: First year college students. You are interested in their Tuition Costs, cost of textbook/ online material, Grade Point Average, and incomes.
6. At your place of employment, your topic may be minimum wage rate; hour of work, promotions, etc.
7. Identify the issue. An issue is question that is stated in the form of a question about your topic. Usually, it describes the relationship between two variables about your topic. Assuming that you have identified costs of tuition for first year students, something that is of concern to you. You believe that the costs of tuition are too high in relationship to your annual employment income, and hence your GPA.

An issue can be formulated as follows:

1. Do the relative costs of tuition affect First Year College Students Grade Point Average?
2. An evaluation of the costs of text on First Year Students GPA

You can state your title base on either one of the two ways above to conduct your research. Research is about defining your problem and then gather data to resolve it.

6. You will collect data on 25 students on three variables:
7. Tuition costs
8. Annual incomes.
9. GPA

Relative tuition cost, in this study, is the ratio of students cost to annual income. The higher is the relative cost, the more likely student will purchase less text book, and hence their GPA will decrease. So, there is a negative relationship between GPA and relative tuition costs. GPA is your dependent variable and the independent variable is relative tuition costs.

Table showing data for 25 students

I:  GPA: Grade point average of end of first year student.

1. II. Variables that may influence GPA: Hours of study; relative cost; relative text book cost.

The table shows the dependent variable (GPA; independent variables (Tuition Costs/Income), Text book costs).

Theoretical relationship

1. Grade Point Average (GPA) refers to the cumulative GPA at the end of the first year of college. Existing literature shows that there is a positive relationship between GPA and the number of hours study. Offer Reference.
2. Relative tuition cost: As the tuition costs rise relative to income, students may spend less on textbooks and the number of preparation time may decrease. Hence GPA and relative cost are inversely related. Offer reference(s)
3. Research Question:

Is there a relationship between GAP, Hours of study, and relative tuition cost?

Research at least three articles that you will use to make reference(s) between the dependent and independent variables; preferably scholarly articles.

1.

2.

3.

IV: Descriptive Statistics of the dependent variable

Prepare a questionnaire that you will use to conduct the survey. You will attach the questionnaire as an appendix to your paper. Again, you will use primary data obtained from my questionnaire survey to answer my research question.

Required:  You will present your paper in stages as follows:

Stage I: Perform a descriptive analysis or descriptive statistics

1. Frequency distribution
2. Histogram
3. Mean
4. Standard deviation
5. Pie Chart

Stage II: PerformInferential Statistics for the dependent variables

1. Point estimate
2. Confidence Intervals
3. VI. Perform a Regression Analysis
4. Write down the regression equation
5. Hypothesis testing

Purpose: To describe how GPA depends on the number of hours study, and relative cost.

1. Scatter plot: Exploratory Data Analysis
2. Regression Model
3. Linear Regression Techniques

VII. Data Analysis and conclusion

1. Level of significance
2. P-values