Week 6: Continuing

Hello! This week I have been continuing to work on data collection. I spoke to Dr. Mandi on the different ways to potentially extract economic information from the data that I can collect. We determined that the best way to gain this information would be to add a couple of points, including whether the patient resides in a house or an apartment and the number of kids that the family has. I feel collecting this information will give us a more accurate approximation of the family’s income and financial status. Owning a house would probably mean the patient or patient’s parents are wealthier, and if a family has more children, they probably have less disposable income. 

I have come up with a plan for the next couple of weeks leading up to the final senior project presentation. I will spend the next two weeks collecting as much data as possible, which will be crucial in determining how significant the results of my analysis are. The week (or two) following that I will be coding and performing data analysis to dissect the information I have gathered, and to ultimately try and figure out if this experiment has led to any finding. I hope to spend one week writing up my poster and creating descriptions for my charts and images. I want to ensure that this information is very easy for someone who doesn’t have a medical or psychology background to understand, because not only is my audience made up of students, teachers, and parents, but the use of academic language can often be intimidating to both patients and parents. The last week or two will be spent creating my senior project presentation, rehearsing and practicing. 

I am excited to see how my final deliverable turns out, I hope it will be highly detailed and be aesthetically pleasing, but ultimately I hope it conveys all the information I’ve discovered in a simple, yet detailed way.

Katie