You must follow the instructions below to get credits for this assignment.
Hint: Make sure to discuss study’s goal, subjects, and variables in the data.
The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study by the U.S Department of Education was a study to measure the academic progress of children ranging from kindergarten to the fifth grade all across the country. The study’s goal was to go deeper than just education and see how students’ home life and family background affect their academic progress. With the addition of normal variables like age, race, affluency, and parents education, but also in depth interviews with parents and teachers. Asking parents questions like do you spank your child? If so, how often do you take them to the library or museums, how much television they watched and questions of that sort. With the goal to see how homelife and other factors impacted a child’s academic progress.
Hint: A correct answer must have a discussion on a main concept of regression, often called as, “all else being equal”, “controlling for other variables”, or “Ceteris paribus”. The author explained this concept using “the circuit board analogy”.
The author defines regression analysis as a “powerful-if limited-tool that uses statistical techniques to identify otherwise elusive correlations”. Basically what this means is that a researcher can put thousands of different variables into a software that can compare and contrast different data sets to come out with an answer. The other describes this by using the data sets first grade math score, third grade math score, first grade reading score, third grade reading score, mothers education level, fathers income, and number of books in the household. Meanwhile this data is across twenty thousand children. With regression analysis the researcher can quickly compare and contrast these variables using anyone they choose as the control.
Hint: A correct answer must have a discussion on causality versus correlation.
One drawback of regression analysis is that it cannot answer specific questions. The author demonstrates this by asking the question “does having a lot of books in your home lead your child to do well in school?”. The author then states that regression analysis cannot answer this question but can answer a similar question, like does a child with a lot of books in their home perform better than a child without a lot of books in their home. Regression analysis can answer this question because it can filter children with a lot of books, and children with few books, and then compare their test scores. Although regression analysis can show this correlation, it cannot confirm nor deny that having more books is the only reason that students may test higher.
Hint: See page 150.
You would assume that going to a higher ranked school would produce a better education. Your right, in this passage the author points out how children in better schools do better than children in poorer schools. Page 150 has a lot to say the comparison of black students to white students. Although the article said that there were very few black students in the better schools that were surveyed, their test scores were right on par with fellow students. The author also goes on to say that majority black schools facilities are similar to majority white schools. Although it has been shown that majority black schools have a far higher rate of troublesome indicators like gangs, loitering, and lack of funding.
Hint: For this question, you may need additional information in addition to the assigned reading. You may Google search someting like “how does regression control for variables”.
One way that you could control for the quality of schools in the study is by only adding schools in the same division or same size. Another way you could control the quality of schools is by choosing only private schools. I personally do not think you could do this because in the end we are all human and you will never find people that are exactly alike. There are far too many variables to be controlled.
Hint: Use message, echo and results in the chunk options. Refer to the RMarkdown Reference Guide.