Capstone Blog Post 3

When I first dove into this project I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had a general outline of who I wanted to work with and how we would collaborate, but I didn’t have a clear sense of what the final product would be. As we have had time to do research and develop our idea, we are starting to hone in on one idea in particular: an anthology. Making a collection of stories through calls for submissions, interviews, and data may give the impact that can help address the rough outline of Chapter 1 in the capstone document. Having this anthology readily available to the public, and more importantly students and staff, might help not only give the researchers gain a more holistic understanding of the impact of sexual violence at Champlain College, but it can help readers as well. At this point, it might be good to amend Chapter 1’s purpose statement to include educating the general public.

One of the challenges in preventing campus sexual violence is dispelling rape myths and reinforcing bystander intervention mindsets. While orientation is a great time to educate all students attending college, it should not be the only time students have the opportunity to become educated. Champlain College may benefit from having this anthology readily available on campus. (Maybe this could stay on display in the Miller Information Commons.) Students who want to do further research could have a huge jumpstart from our capstone project. Additionally, we have already decided to work with Champlain College to help fill some of the cracks in our Title IX reporting system which will undoubtably involve looking at the college’s bystander intervention program. Education should be part of the purpose statement.

Providing the context for this project was harder to do before we had any significant amount of research. In my next revision it might not be a bad idea to read through Title IX and pull definitions from the legislation itself as it may be much more concise than my explanation. Fortunately, providing context pertaining to Champlain College did not require research as I have had experiences over the past three years that can substitute for any research that I might find on this campus. The significance of the project also did not need research due to the nature of this project. Finding relevance for a general audience was easy as this topic has such a widespread impact that it would be hard for most people to not find this research somewhat relevant to their life.

Finding data that pertains to this project was easy due to the Clery Act requiring any college that receives federal funding to report statistics regarding enrollment and crimes. Combining this data will be the biggest challenge as different files separate different types of crimes. In total, there are 11 files I will have to amend to a single data frame so I can analyze data for each college. Additionally, I may have to find a different way to structure the data as each row contains all the statistics for all crimes at that college. More of this data cleaning and analysis will be covered in Chapter 3.

Once I had my data it was also important to research more about Title IX and sexual violence through multiple scopes so I could understand what I was looking at. The research was successful and has helped me understand the limitations of the data set. One main concern is that this data only contains reported cases, so it is very likely that any prediction I make will be an underestimate. Additionally, there is no mention in this data set of what colleges are under investigation for violating Title IX. Some of these numbers may be drastically skewed as certain colleges have been reporting false numbers or turning away victims when they report cases.

Now that I have more knowledge on the subject, it should be easier to find what I specifically want to know from this dataset. (That being said, I may look at prior research on this data set in case I need further guidance.) Asking research questions can help narrow the scope of what data I want to analyze. While I do have data that includes most colleges in the United States, it may not make sense to include every college when specifically looking at Champlain College. Before writing Chapter 3 I will be forming these questions as a framework for my research.

Regarding the budget of this project, it seems there are almost no costs for the Data Analytics side of this project. Creating a physical anthology may cost money, but this would come out of the professional writing budget, not Data Analytics. It might be relevant to buy a domain for this project, but domains are typically priced at $15-$20 which is not substantial enough to get covered by the ITS budget. Since money will not be a barrier until the very end of this project, we should not be limited by finances for the foreseeable future.