Social Challenges Report

This assessment is worth 40 marks towards your final grade.

This report is a demonstration of all your learning in the modules 1-4. The things that are required of you in this report will pull on ideas and skills that you developed across these modules. Allow yourself the chance to do well, by carefully reading all instructions, starting work early, joining/watching drop-in sessions, and asking/reading questions-responses on the discussion boards. Your teaching and learning activities in the unit have been designed to help you do really well at this assessment task: if you give yourself the chance. The expected time outlay for this assessment across the remainder of the assessment is 20-30 hours of work (start to finish). This assessment has been designed, so that leaving the assessment until the last 48 hours would mean you would not be able to achieve higher than a pass grade (if that).

Marks

Please follow the instructions closely, as the report must be presented correctly to enable you to earn full marks.

• Submission Checklist of Excellence - 1 mark
• Collaborative Work Statement - 1 mark
• Part A: Annotated Bibliography - 8 marks
  • Each entry is worth 2 marks
• Part B: Data Collection and Analysis: Interview - 12 marks
  • Thematic analysis Framework Table (4 marks)
  • Statement of Key findings (4 marks)
  • Statement about the Interviewer Experience (4 marks)
• Part C: Data Collection and Analysis: Questionnaire - 12 marks
  • Analysis of Quantitative Data (8 marks)
  • Statement about a Quantitative Researcher Experience (4 marks)
• Part D: Public Dissemination: Discussion and Recommendations - 6 marks

Report Template

There is a specific template document for this report. You must use the document to create your assessment, to ensure you include all the required elements. Assessments that do not use the template risk automatic failure.

Cooperative and Collaborative Learning

The university requires students to act with ‘integrity’ when it comes to assessment. Within the WSU Student Code of Conduct, this means:

1. giving due acknowledgement to the ideas, work and contribution of others and ensuring the proper use of copyright material;
2. understanding and avoiding plagiarism, collusion, cheating, providing their work to others, misrepresenting the work of others as their own, including their own previously submitted work without agreement of the Unit Coordinator.
3. acting honestly and ethically, upholding the highest standards of academic integrity in the production of all academic work and assessment tasks, including the conduct of research, and upholding the Student Honour Code;

(https://policies.westernsydney.edu.au/document/view.current.php?id=258)

While the university (and your tutors) take a strong stance against cheating (i.e. intentionally deceiving us about the originality of your work), we do encourage you to work together. In fact, your best learning will happen when you collaborate with and teach your peers.

For this assessment task for this unit, you have the choice and flexibility to work alone, in pairs, or in small groups. This cooperation can even change with different tasks. Many of the tasks that you undertake here will be grounded in work that is done during tutorials or whilst working with others. We acknowledge this inevitable cooperation, and encourage it as long as you meet the basic principles around collaboration and cooperative learning:

1. We believe that the overwhelming majority of students act with good intentions, and they look down upon those who cheat or are deceitful, when it comes to assessments. We also take a strong stance against exploitation of students in a group setting, all students feel comfortable reaching out to the Unit Coordinator, when they believe they are in an exploitative situation.
2. The Collaborative Work statement must be completed by everyone. It should acknowledge when you have worked together, when you have had help from others, and/or when you have helped others. (i.e. all situations when collaboration might have taken place). For example, perhaps someone helped you make a graph, or maybe they helped you understand what the graph was saying. Maybe you worked to do interviews together or walked around the neighbourhood as buddies. All of these need to be acknowledged. If you get significant assistance from someone who is not currently a student in the unit, you should also acknowledge this (i.e. if a parent edits your work).
3. Collaboration and Cooperation must be voluntary: if someone is pressuring you to give them help, or look at your assignment, your data, write things, then let us know (either ahead of time, or in your personal Collaborative Work Statement. For example, pressuring a peer through messages to show you their work (even incomplete) would be seen as involuntary collaboration.
4. Individual Submission: This is not a group assignment. You are required to submit a document that is entirely your own written work. Manipulation of language and document structure to hide collaboration will be seen as an integrity and misconduct matter (as this is about deceit).
5. Workload: Collaboration is not about minimising the workload: rather it is about giving you the opportunity to explore deeper and engage in discussion with your peers, as you prepare your submission. This means you must still complete the same amount of work. For example, if you work with 1 peer on the interview task, then you will need to carry out 4 interviews (i.e. 2 each: though you could do all 4 together). If you are doing the landscape observation task together, then you will need different photos. If you are doing the questionnaire analysis together (most students will collaborate in some way here), you will need to create your own tables and graphs.

This unit is about empowering you in many different settings, and empowerment is not just an individual achievement, but it is also about your relationship with the group. Exploiting others, deceiving the community, cheating, and manipulating all reflect badly on you (particularly those of you going into professions where honesty and integrity are core values).

Our expectation is that you take the opportunity to learn from, collaborate with, and teach your peers, but that you are completely honest when it comes to admitting to this collaboration and cooperation (very few people will be able to complete this assessment entirely on their own). Your work will be marked on its own merits (and that you have met the minimum requirements). The Collaborate Work Statement is your expression of integrity. The idea is that we know you work with others, and we want to encourage you to help each other, and gain a strong an understanding of tasks, but we need to also teach you a key part of academic integrity, which is acknowledge all contributors to a work, no matter how small that contribution is.

Guiding Research Question:

The research activities undertaken in this report are guided by the research question:

What impact will climate change have on the population of Western Sydney? What support do they need to meet the challenges that it presents?

Each task investigates this question from a slightly different angle. For Part D, you need to think about this broader research question when deciding upon what key findings you will present and emphasise.

Tasks to be completed:

1. Annotated Bibliography (instead of a literature review – this is guided by Module 2)
2. Data Collection and Analysis - 2 tasks (these are guided by Modules 3 and 4)
   1. Data Collection and Analysis: Interview
   2. Data Collection and Analysis: Questionnaire

Public Announcement Video (Discussion, Conclusion and Recommendations)

Part A: Annotated Bibliography (300 words = 4 x 75 words) 8 marks in total

Most topics have a rich tradition of research, so is very unlikely that you can read absolutely everything about an idea. Rather it is about identifying the key books and articles, and the main figures who have written in the field. Being able to link your own research questions, findings, and discussion to the existing literature is an important way of demonstrating the credibility and contribution of your research. When reviewing the literature, we read to determine:

• What is already known about the topic
• What concepts and theories have been applied to the topic
• What research methods have been applied to the topic
• What controversies exist about the topic and how it is studied
• What clashes of evidence (if any) exist
• Who the key contributors to research on the topic are.

For this assessment, we do not want you to conduct or write a literature review, rather we want you to identify key works that you could discuss or draw upon (for a literature review). You are going to do this by creating an Annotated Bibliography.

An Annotated bibliography is a reference list with a concise description and evaluation of each entry. It is organised alphabetically, and each entry is discussed separately within the context of the research interests of the author. In compiling an annotated bibliography, you need to think about the relevance and the quality of the material on a topic. As a researcher, you would utilise your annotated bibliography to develop and inform your literature review.

For this section of your assessment task, you need to create an annotated bibliography containing 4 peer-review journal articles (i.e. not books or book chapters, nor articles from The Conversation, or any other source). Your reading/research should seek to identify how your discipline (or area of study) is contributing to the knowledge and discussion around impacts and adaptations to the challenges that climate change presents. For example, if you are a policing student, yo-u might search for “climate change” AND police, or “climate change” AND crime…

You must use the library catalogue and/or databases for this task (i.e. you cannot use google or google scholar): https://library.westernsydney.edu.au The ability to use the library effectively will help you speed up the background research and reading processes for all your assessments. Google and Scholar Google are useful, but they are also limited (particularly when it comes to the ‘paywalls’). 

If you are not experienced in using the library (or want to develop your skills), then it is suggested that you (re)watch the video for the Mastery on Mondays Week 3 drop-in session: https://youtu.be/2TfnT7j8_g8 You can also ask a librarian: they will be excited to show you how to utilise the resources that are freely available to you. The library also has some resources specifically for annotated bibliographies (but please follow the template and requirements set out in this document): 

https://westernsydney.edu.au/studysmart/home/assessment_guides/annotated_bibliographies.

Once you locate a peer-reviewed article that you think is valuable, read it (efficiently!), and then develop a evaluative summary addressing the elements in the template below. You must submit your annotated bibliography using the provided template (to ensure you include all the required elements). Only the words in the Summary and Evaluation section count towards the word count of the assessment (each statement should be 75 words).

(further reading about literature reviews: Flowerdew, R. (2005) ‘Finding Previous Work on the Topic’, in Flowerdew, R, & Martin, DM (eds) 2005, Methods in Human Geography: A Guide for Students Doing a Research Project, Taylor & Francis Group, Old Tappan, Chapter 4: pp48-56)

Part B: Data Collection and Analysis – Interview (12 marks in total)

This task has 3 components

1. Conduct 2 recorded interviews exploring the beliefs and experiences of the impact of climate change within Western Sydney
2. Analyse these interviews: Thematic Analysis Framework Table
3. Writing Up:
   1. Thematic Analysis Framework Table (4 marks)
   2. Key Findings (4 marks)
   3. The interview experience (4 marks)

In the first action tasks of Module 4 (ACTION 4A), you will begin to develop your skills as an interviewer. A good interviewer is someone who becomes skilled at conversation. It is about asking questions in an open and inviting way and actively listening to the responses given. Interviews can be:

• Structured: every question is planned ahead
• Semi-structured: the structure and some questions are planned, but the interview is guided by the responses of the interviewee
• Unstructured: the interviewer sits down for an open discussion, with little pre-planning about the direction of the conversation. This is used particularly when conducting life-history interviews)

B.1. Conducting the interviews

For this task, you need to conduct (and record) 2 interviews, exploring the interviewees beliefs and experiences of the impact of climate change within Western Sydney. It would be preferable to use people who are not students of this unit or Western Sydney University (though this may be unavoidable). It might be interesting to target too very different people (i.e. young or adult; politically progressive or politically conservative; university educated versus didn’t finish high school; the part of western Sydney that they live). It would be easier to do this with someone who is NOT a climate change denialist, but if you are feeling confident then take the challenge (it could be a very interesting conversation)!

Each interview should go for 10-30 mins, (though some people will want to talk much longer, and this is fine). It should be either semi-structured (starting with some of the questions generated in Action 4A) or unstructured.

The interview needs to be a conversation between you and the interviewee. You want them to discuss:

• Their perceptions of the current and potential impacts of climate change for western Sydney, Australia, or the world….
• The challenges that climate change might pose to western Sydney (personally and/or for governments)
• The adaptations that they think are being made, or should be made
• The Necessary support for Western Sydney to meet the challenges of climate change
• Their hope (and/or despair) for the future.

Make sure you collect some demographical information that might be relevant when discussing their responses.

You need to record the interviews (either use the voice recorder on your phone or computer, or even the video functions). You could also do the interview over zoom, and record the zoom session. The files must be kept safely for us to review during the marking process if requested You should make sure you have the interviewees’ permission to record the interview, letting them know that it will only be used for this assessment, and deleted upon completion of the unit (unless they give you permission otherwise).

B.2 Analyse your Interviews.

For this task, we do not want you to formally transcribe and analyse the interviews (transcription alone could take up to 6 times as long as the interview recording). Instead, we want you to listen back over your recordings, and see whether you can identify/summarise key thoughts from your interviewees about:

• Their overall thoughts about the impact that climate change might have on Western Sydney
• Their perceptions of the current and potential impacts of climate change for western Sydney, Australia, or the world….
• The challenges that climate change might pose to western Sydney (personally and/or for governments)
• The adaptations that they think are being made, or should be made
• The Necessary support for Western Sydney to meet the challenges of climate change
• Their hope (and/or despair) for the future.

This process is called Thematic Analysis. A theme is a category identified by the researcher within the data, it will relate to the research focus/question, and provides the researcher with the basis for understanding how their data links to the existing literature and other ideas within the project. One general strategy for assisting a thematic analysis of qualitative data is “Framework”.  Framework is a ‘matrix’ based (table-based) method for ordering and synthesising data. In the first column, we identify the themes and subthemes that we are looking for. We then have a column for each interviewee participant. The rows represent the themes/sub-themes.

For this assessment, you are to use the Interview Analysis Framework below. You can add rows to represent sub-themes if you want to, but we should be able to identify the core rows listed below. You will need to include this table in your final submission.

B.3. Writing Up

1. For your final report, you need to present the analysis of 2 interviews within your Thematic Analysis Framework Table.
2. A statement about your main findings (about 100 words). Highlight the key findings from your interviews (you will need to be highly selective), and how the responses of the two interviewees might be similar/differ, and perhaps speculate why this might occur. A very good response would find links back to already existing literature on the impacts of climate change.
3. A statement (about 100 words) about the experience you had as an interviewer. This statement should be pragmatic (what did you do) and self-reflective (your thoughts about the experience, your skill as an interviewer, etc). A very good response should incorporate some academic literature as a way of situating your response within the existing literature about researching using interviews.

Part C: Data Collection and Analysis – Questionnaire Analysis (12 marks in total)

The primary quantitative method used in the social sciences is the questionnaire (usually an online questionnaire). We are not getting you to design a questionnaire for this task (you will be doing that in Applied Social Research), rather this part of your report will allow you to demonstrate the development of your skills as a quantitative researcher. Whilst many social science students hate the idea of numbers (as do many staff), it is very important that you learn to understand how other people are using/misusing the numbers. People in power talk with numbers because they know that the non-powerful are less comfortable with them: this lets the powerful make decisions about you without you. Also money is all about numbers: so if you want to be financially safe, then you need to know how to read those numbers on the receipt!

If you are someone who identifies as having ‘numerical dread’ (i.e. the idea of looking at numbers/maths/stats makes you cry or faint), then please try to engage with all the help sessions and resources that will be made available to you. Do not attempt this part of the assessment until you have completed the ACTION task for Module 4 (i.e. tutorial 3). We are not looking for you to be experts here, but to be honest in your attempt to try to engage and understand what you are doing and what your research is telling you.

This task has three components:

1. Completing the Class Questionnaire: each student needs to complete the questionnaire once – your student number will be recorded during your attempt, but will be deleted when the data is analysed)
2. Analysing the Data
3. Writing Up:
   1. The findings of your analysis (8 marks)
   2. The experience of being a quantitative researcher (4 marks)

For this task, you will need to use Microsoft Excel (either the online, windows or Mac version). You have free access to this through the university. These instructions have not been tested for other software.

Overview

There are Four tasks in Part C.2. You should attempt all tasks. Each task has a numerical element and an interpretative element. You do not need to get the numbers right to get marks for your interpretation. The emphasis here is not on the maths, but rather on what the numbers mean.

Each task has an easier element that all students should be able to achieve. There is then a more challenging element for those who are more confident or are willing to take the risk that they know more than they think they do. Each task also has an interpretative element that is worth half the marks. If your maths is wrong, you can still earn interpretative marks for interpreting the results you got.

ALL STUDENTS (and many do) HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO EARN FULL MARKS IN THIS SECTION – don’t give up just because someone once told you that you were bad at maths, or because you feel bamboozled. This is not an exam. You have lots of time to make sure that you are confident you have done the right thing. That being said, it should not take you more than 4 hours to complete all the tasks here.

THERE IS NO WORD LIMIT FOR PART C - it would be meaningless (a word count on a table is ridiculous). In the places where you asked to write something, we will give you a guide of how many sentences we would expect you need, and then you should use your own judgement to think about whether you have explained your answer completely.

You do not need to include references in Part C.2of the report (But you should look to include a reference in Part C.3)

ALL RESPONSES NEED TO BE INSERTED INTO YOUR FINAL SUBMISSION IN THE RELEVANT SECTIONS OF THE REPORT TEMPLATE. The required tables have been prepared, you just need to copy-paste (insert) the numbers into the correct box – to 1 decimal point. 

Part C. 1 Collecting the Data

Part C explores perceptions of climate change using quantitative data derived from the questionnaire “HUMN2066 Impacts of Climate Change”. The questionnaire investigated the beliefs and experiences of students in the subject, with regards to climate change, its causes and current and potential impacts. The questionnaire contained over 50 questions in the form of multiple choice and Likert questions. From this data, we have selected some interesting points to explore in this analysis. You can find a PDF copy of the questionnaire at HERE

At the time of writing these notes, the questionnaire had been completed by 509 students (from a total population of 850 students). This gives us a response rate of 59.9%. Social scientists are usually very pleased if they get a response rate of 20-30%. Why might the response rate for this questionnaire have been high?

Part C.2 Analysis of Data

There are 6 sections to Part C.2. The first familiarises you with Excel and the data. The remaining sections are for tasks 1-5. There is a short instructional video specifically for each task. The video works you through the instructions to the point where you are being assessed.  We assume NO KNOWLEDGE of excel or statistics in this assessment. Each Task indicates how many marks are assigned to it. It has a specific question that the analysis is seeking to answer, a rationale (why we want to know this), the analysis steps, and then instructions for what needs to be included in the final report (table data and interpretative statement).

Understanding Excel and the data – see Video 1

1. Download PARTC_DATA.xlsx and Open it in Microsoft EXCEL.

When each of you completed the online survey, the data was added to a table (or spreadsheet). With 70+ responses from the class so far, a table is an easy way to gather the data for pattern recognition.

2. Spreadsheets organise data in Rows and Columns.
   • Rows:
     • The first row in the excel spreadsheet contains the names (or titles) of each column (or variable). This particular spreadsheet has been set up so that the titles are always visible if you scroll down the page.
     • Each row contains the relevant responses of one participant who completed the questionnaire.

• Columns: Every column represents one variable.
  • Variables are the characteristics of a participants that change from one person to the next. For example, we might record information about participants such as their age, gender, degree of study. In our dataset, we have the following variables. This may be an answer to a question that was asked, or it may be a computation based on the response given to a number of questions.
  • TABLE 1 below contains the names and descriptions of each variable in the excel spreadsheet.
• CELL: Every box in a spreadsheet has a code LETTER and NUMBER.
  • The letter refers to the column, the number refers to the row.
  • For example the box that has the text Connection to Nature is Cell E1. The box below that is Cell E2. The text Age (Years) is in cell B1 (we will use these codes later on – but the instructions will tell you what to right).
• Functions: We will be using ‘functions’ in excel. Functions are formulas pre-programmed into the software. There are 100s of these, and we will be using some of the more common ones to speed up (and ease up) our analysis. To start using a function, you click in a blank cell (usually somewhere near the data you are analysing) and type = and then the relevant code-word.