computer room lesson 20th/23rd Jan - conclusions/evaluations

Conclusives,

you should, by now, have pretty much finished your analysis, bar some editing.

The job of the conclusion slash evaluation (you don't have to combine them but I always recommend it) is to put everything you've found into context:

•  recap what you found, briefly (using anaphoric reference - discourse markers that refer back) to add cohesion - establish how far the hypothesis is or is not supported and any other key findings
• be tentative in drawing conclusions and show that you are aware that your investigation is too limited to prove anything
• what contextual factors might explain how far the data does/does not support the hypothesis?
• Look at the GRAPE of the texts 
• but also at wider contextual factors like 
• society's attitudes changing since the original research or other diachronic factors
• the data you sampled (gender/race etc of participants and size of sample - reliability)
• offer alternative interpretations where possible 
• are there any apparent anomalies which  may be skewing the data? What is the picture without that anomaly? Are there any significant outliers in your quantified data? Why might they be the case?
•  evaluate what were the effective (and less effective) approaches (consider commenting on the usefulness of a quantified approach as well as which techniques you chose to focus on and how successful that was)
• don't be too critical - remember, you are trying to show off your thoughtful considerations not admit you did it wrong because you didn't think hard enough about it in the first place 
• BUT, on reflection, what would you need to change to improve the generalisability of your investigation (i.e. what would make your findings more reliable)?

I will take printed copies of these in, as well as the methodology as I need to see those again, on Fri 27th (for A-Block who have a computer room lesson on Fridays) or Monday 30th (for E-block who have coursework lessons on Mondays).

I should be able to get those marked in a week so we can do some peer assessment on the whole investigation in the week before the holiday; then you can do final tweaks.