College Student Work in a Week – Signature Assignment

The plan for this research study is how many hours a week does a college student work in a week. According to Marina Fang, “college students are working 19 hours on average, many work more than 20 hours a week and some even hold full-time jobs” (Fang, 2013). I agree with Marina Fang that college students do work an average of 19 hours or more. After I gathered my data, I believe that Maryland college students work over 19 hours.

Data Collection:

The data collection method that I decided to use was the survey method and the sampling method I used was convenience sampling. I chose these methods because the question I was trying to get data for I could easily use social media as a platform to ask my question on. I did a poll on Instagram and SnapChat. There were 40 people who were surveyed. All were Maryland college students and not all of them reside in Carroll County. Since I did these types of methods an impact my methods could have on my results is that my data would not be as accurate as other methods would be because my data can be from people in other states if I didn’t specify that they needed to be from Maryland.

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On average, college students work 29.15 hours a week with a standard deviation of 9.91 hours a week. This average compares to Fang and what she reported in her study by showing us that the mean time for just Maryland college students is over 20 hours but in her study she is saying for all US college students she believes that they work a mean average of about 19 or more than 20 hours per week

Box-and-Whisker Plot:

Outliers:

Lower Limit: 10-1.5(15) = -5 hours

Upper Limit: 50+1.5(15) = 72.5 hours

Distribution Shape:

The type of distribution that my stem and leaf plot showed is a skewed right distribution. The stem and leaf plot if turned to the side an individual can determine the skewed right distribution as well. My box and whisker plot also portrayed a skewed right distribution. This is because the tail of the box and whisker plot is longer on the right side indicating a skewed right distribution. There are no outliers in this specific set of data. The mean is larger making it a skewed right distribution and making the median and mode smaller.

My overall opinion on my data’s distribution shape is that it is skewed right because the mean is larger meaning the data with increase and then eventually fall to the right.

Confidence Interval:

I used a T-Distribution because my σ was unknown but n≥30 and the x ̅ was assumed normal.

E=t_c s/√n and x ̅-E< μ< x ̅+E and the values t_0.95=2.023, s=9.91, n=40, x ̅=29.15. This will result in a margin of error of E= 2.0239.91/√40 = 3.17 which results in a confidence interval of

25.98 hours< μ< 32.32 hours

Based on our sample, we can state that with a 95% confidence, that the population mean, μ, hours a week for Maryland college students is between 25.98 hours and 32.32 hours. Based on Marina Fang’s statement, my results portrayed more than 19 hours and she stated that students work 19 hours on average but there are students who work over 20 hours a week.

Hypothesis Testing:

I believe that college students in Maryland work more than 19 hours a week because they know that working more can benefit them financially throughout college.

H0: μ =19

H1: μ >19 (claim)

This is a right tail test and my claim is the alternate hypothesis, I will test this claim at a 5% level of significance. The population distribution is unknown as well as the population standard deviation, but the sample size is greater than 30. Since the population distribution and standard deviation are unknown, I will be conducting the hypothesis test using the t-distribution. Using the T-Test and a calculator where n=40, x ̅=29.15, and s=9.91, I got a t-value of 6.4802 and a p-value of 0.0000000558. My p-value is less than my level of significance which means I will reject the null hypothesis. Based on our sample, at the 5% level of significance, there is enough evidence to support the claim that Maryland college students work more than 19 hours a week. Since I rejected the null hypothesis my data is statistically significant at the 5% level of significance.

Conclusion:

After reviewing my results, I realized that my hypothesis I made in the beginning of my study was greater than Marina Fang’s was. I gathered my data by doing a poll on Snapchat and Instagram which made it a little difficult in the beginning to gather my data, but in the end it was easier for me to gather my data this way because a lot of people use social media now a days. Doing my hypothesis testing I knew that it would portray that Maryland college students do work more than 19 hours a week and my confidence interval also portrayed that as well. My sampling method was a hard choice because I knew I could gather my data multiple ways, but I knew going with social media that my results would not be as accurate.

Reflection:

This assignment helped me better understand how to correctly collect information and making inferences about a population. The way that this assignment really helped me was by challenging me to go onto different social media platforms to collect the information. Since I decided to do it this way it was harder for me to collect my data, by having this assignment it showed me how to face that challenge and be able to collect it and turn it into this assignment.

The things I would change in the future for how I completed this type of assignment would be time management, I struggled with this a lot throughout the assignment. I would make these changes because if I had better time management skills, I think this assignment would have been a lot easier in my opinion.

Reference:

1. Fang, M. (2013, August 7). Nearly 80 Percent Of Students Work While In School. Retrieved from https://thinkprogress.org/nearly-80-percent-of-students-work-while-in-school-2f44edacd275/

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