QR Fall 2002

Case 3: Race and Residence in Massachusetts

Final Project

In your third and final project you will generate and formally test two hypotheses about residential concentration by race and/or ethnicity in Massachusetts, using data from Census 2000. At least one of your hypotheses must explicitly compare the experiences of African-Americans and Hispanics.

Your final project should contain the following sections:

1. Introduction. From one to three paragraphs, the introduction should draw on the sources you have engaged during the case to clearly set the context for the research issues you will engage in the body of the paper. Feel free to draw on the course website, reading pack, lectures, previous labs and homeworks, the census website, the Lewis Mumford center website. Importantly, the introduction will contain your thesis statement or argument, foreshadowing the conclusion(s) of which the reader will be persuaded by the time they have reached the end of your paper! Note, the formulation "the purpose of this paper is to examine theory b" is not an argument whereas "an analysis of 2000 census data suggests that theory b is a crock and theory a is a winner" is a conclusion/argument.

2. Description of data and variables. This is a standard part of all research papers. You might want to go to the census to get a brief description of the data, mention the year it was collected, the level of analysis (the tracts) etc. In addition, you are obliged to briefly describe the variables you will use. This is particularly important given the skewness of several of the distributions we are analyzing. Use numbers, tables and/or charts to describe your variables. Describe any recoding you performed and explain its logic. Finally, you should also mention what methods of analysis you are using, e.g., descriptive statistics, charts, crosstabs etc..

3. Formal statement of the Research and Null Hypothesis. As in Homework 3, you need to formally state your hypotheses and their underlying logic. For the underlying logic, you might refer back to your introduction where you set up the research problem/issues.

4. Analysis. In this section you present and discuss your tables and describe and interpret the chi-square tests. Talk about the patterns in the tables using the actual numbers (not every single number but enough to anchor your narrative). Say what the chi-square test is and how it works. Interpret the test statistic.

5. Summary and Conclusion. Formally assess your hypotheses in light of the data analysis. Do your hypotheses stand or were you unable to reject the null hypothesis? Are there other things you would want to know to pursue your findings further? What conclusions or implications are there from your findings? Does your research suggest further possibilities for analysis?

Following Professor Schwartz’s lead, I have attached a set of 5 big ideas/concepts from the readings and Professor Smith’s lecture for you to think about. I hope they will help you formulate good hypotheses. The really important point is to connect the big idea à with the research hypothesis à stated in terms of the actual variables you have for the data at hand. Telling us clearly in words how you are making these connections is the essence of good, understandable, useful quantitative data analysis.