Impact of Demographic Variables

Question: Describe the impact of demographic variables on African-American student athletes academic performance. Answer: Introduction The academic performance of the student is generally considered as the critical aspect of assessing the quality of education. The academic scores alone are not sufficient enough to fully understand the cause of academic success or failure. Various institutes have enrolled students based on their athletic character; most of them do not possess the reasonable possibility to pass the academic tests (Reynolds, Fisher, Cavil, 2012). Several academic researchers have shown the significant effect of demographic characteristics on their academic career. Especially of the African-American athletic student, various factors play the vital role in for both men and women athletics to succeed in academic life. In this particular study, the detailed analysis needs to be performed to understand fully the factor affecting the academic performance of the African-American Student Athletes. In this particular study, the researcher needs to choose descriptive procedure for conducting the research. Furthermore, the analyst will consider both qualitative and quantitative data collection process for having a detailed idea and understanding the research topic. 1. Research questions Research questions are believed to be the most useful area for understanding the research topic in detailed and easy manner. The research questions emphasize in the area of research that provides the analyst with better understanding collecting useful and relevant data for analysis. The research questions set for this particular topic are: Do the African-American athletic students have external influence over the academic performance? How much the demographic characteristics of athletic students affect the academic career? 2. Hypothesis The hypothesis set for conducting the research is: Hypothesis 1: H0: The gender, age, cultural background, occupation, family background effect has a significant impact on their academic performance. H1: The gender, age, cultural background, occupation, family background effect has no impact on their academic performance. Hypothesis 2: H0: The demographic characteristics do affect the academic performance of the African-American Student Athletes. H1: The demographic characteristics do not affect the academic performance of the African-American Student Athletes. 3. Research purpose Conducting the research on the topic Impact of Demographic Variables on African-American Student Athletes Academic Performance will help the researcher understand the relationship between academic performance and demographic variables. In terms of academic performance, there are usually two types of students who can improve their performance and who cannot (Carrell, Sacerdote, West, 2013). Thus, conducting the research will provide the analyst understand the influence of characters like gender, age, cultural background, occupation, family background upon the academic performance of the African-American students athletics. 4. Research Design Choosing a particular research design helps the researcher in explaining the detailed framework for that will provide a better selection of data collection and analysis pattern. During the data collection and data analysis process following a particular approach helps in better defining the selected research design (Traynowicz et al., 2016). In academic researchers, three particular research designs are followed, namely exploratory, explanatory and descriptive. The exploratory research design is utilized by the researcher to acknowledge several kinds of thoughts and ideas required to complete the analysis. In explanatory design, the events and incidents occurrence are described on the pattern of their occurrence. The Explanatory research design is limited only by the cause and effect characteristics of events (Busch et al., 2014). Apart from that, the descriptive design seeks the detailed description along with the occurrence of the incidents or events. Justification: For this particular research topic, the researcher should be avid the explanatory research design since the longitudinal study was not possible to research of this particular topic (Johnson, Wessel Pierce, 2013). For the analysis of this particular topic, the researcher will need to follow the descriptive research design for analysis the impact of demographic characteristics on the African American student athletes academic performance. 4.1. Elements of the design The essential elements of the research design help in describing the conceptual structure of the research design. The vital elements of research design are sample size, types of data collected and data collection procedure to conduct the research. Sample: Population in the research study is defined as the number of people who are indirectly or directly concerned with the research topic (Mertens, 2014). In this particular research study, the African-American basketball players of university and colleges are taken into consideration. Since the number of the population concerned with the research is not possible to represent, the researcher will consider football players of Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Alabama universities. Sample size: The sample size is considered to be the number of people on whom the research is conducted. The researcher will consider total 100 football players twenty from each of the area to conduct research. The sample size will be selected on random from different universities. Types of Data: For conducting the research study, the analyst needs to collect various kinds of data. There are two types of data, namely Quantitative and Qualitative. The researcher will collect both qualitative and quantitative data from valid and reliable sources. The Qualitative data are usually defined as the narrative form of data collected from the secondary sources that provide theoretical and better description of the research topic (Mazanov et al., 2013). The quantitative data assists in defining the data collected from the primary sources. The quantitative data provides a statistic representation of the collected data. In this research topic, the data collected from interviews with the professors of the different universities are considered for qualitative data collection and the data collected from students will be considered as the quantitative data. Data Collection Procedure: For the data collection procedure, the researcher needs to consider the face-to-face interview with the professors about the impact of demographic character on students academic performance (Voyer, Voyer, 2014). The interaction session and interview will provide the researcher with qualitative data for analysis. On the other hand, the athletic students of the universities will be given an online survey for collection of primary raw data. 4.2. Data Analysis Measure: The data collected from the secondary source will be considered for providing a theoretical background to the research topic. For the analysis of the data, the primary data will be taken into consideration. The researcher will conduct qualitative and qualitative and quantitative analysis of data. The students will be asked on participating in an online survey that will comprise of various questions. The response of the students will be collected on rating according to Likerts Scale from 1 to 5 (Blumer, 2016). Here, 1 rating means strongly agree, and 5 rating means strongly disagree, and the 3 rating will represent neutral answer towards the question. Statistical Analysis: For analyzing the data collected from the primary sources, the researcher will consider an application of regression models for data analysis (Lewis, 2015). As motioned in the above sections, the researcher has considered various aspects such as academic performance, demographic characteristics, and others. In order to advance with the first hypothesis The gender, age, cultural background, occupation, family background effect has the significant impact on their academic performance" the researcher will consider applying the multiple regression analysis models. For this regression model, the academic performance is considered as the dependent variable whereas gender, age, cultural background, occupation, family background are the dependent variable. Therefore, the regression model will look like- Academic Performance = A + B*Gender + C*Age + D*Cultural Background + E*Occupation + F*Family background Where A = Intercept of the Model B = Coefficient of Gender C = Coefficient of Age D = Coefficient of Cultural background E = Coefficient of occupation F = Coefficient of Family Background On the other hand, for the analysis of the second hypothesis- "The demographic characteristics do affect the academic performance of the African-American Student Athletes, the researcher will also utilize multiple regression models. For this analysis of data, Academic performance is considered as the dependent variable whereas the African-American Student Athletes and demographic characteristics have been considered as the independent variable. Thus, after applying the second hypothesis, the regression model will look like: Academic performance = A + B* African-American Student Athletes + C* demographic characteristics Where A = Intercept of the Model B = Coefficient of African-American Student Athletes C = Coefficient of demographic characteristics 4.3. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Envision Design and Methods Strength: Conducting the descriptive research design for the data analysis and collection of data provides various significant aspects of having in-depth knowledge of the research topic. The significant aspect of the research design is that it will provide a multi-facet approach for the collection of data (Kowalczyk, 2014). This research approach will provide insight details of the academic performance of the athletic students. Apart from that, one of the major advantages of this study that it will maintain data confidentiality of the information collected through the research (Voyer, Voyer, 2014). Apart from that, the data collected for this research will be considered for voluntary involvement of the participants. No external pressure will be exerted on the students for the online survey processes. Weakness: The research procedure allows the researcher in gaining in-depth description and details of the research topic. But there is no denying the fact that, there do exist various limitation and weaknesses that are both non-avoidable and avoidable in nature (Li, 2013). The weaknesses in the research process restrict the scope of the research topic. In spite of the various advantages of conducting the research in the said procedure, there is no denying the fact that there do exists some weaknesses. Reliability: The athletic students involved in the process of online survey were not influenced by any kind of external pressure. However, the students can be biased towards the university and professor that may have affected the findings of the research procedure (Boone, Boone, 2012). Thus, the issues regarding the reliability of the data are existent in the research study. Furthermore, due to the cross-sectional characteristics of the research study, the analyst has the time limitation for conducting the data collection and analysis procedure. Thus, various in-depth information and details will not be able to consider during the study. Another weakness of the research is the budget constraint in this investigation. Lack of sufficient resources has limited the data collection to fewer students and universities that will not provide the accurate research conclusion. 4.4. Quantitative: How you will address threats to validity One of the most vital manifestations of Quantitative Data in the research paper is the validity. The ultimate question that lies while accounting the quantitative data collection and analysis is whether the research can draw a valid conclusion to the research questions (Rosenkrantz at al., 2013). The threat for ensuring the validity of the data lies throughout the research. For mitigating the threats to ensure valid data the researcher need to have sufficient knowledge about the contradiction of logic. The internal validity issues may occur while using the appropriate instrument for the research. To address the threats to validity, the researcher must not be biased against using particular instrument should be avoided. Furthermore, the threats to address the external data validity need to be also considered (Little, Rubin, 2014). The external validity refers to the reliability of the data collected from the sample size of the research. For ensuring the validity of data, the researcher needs to select the sample size on random. Furthermore, the researcher must not exert any external pressure on the respondents for providing responds to the online survey. 4.5. Quantitative: the constructs to measure to operationalize them For measuring the quantitative data collected in the data collection process, the researcher will use Likerts scale for collecting the data on a range of 1 to 5. The responses will be collected on the basis of five entities strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree with the analysis (Mandel, 2012). Furthermore, the researcher will consider the application of multiple regression models for the analysis of collected data on the basis of the hypothesis (Voyer, Voyer, 2014). The data will be stored in tabular form, and statistical representation will be provided for the better understanding and representation of the collected data. 4.6. Qualitative: ensuring the quality of findings The Qualitative data needs to concern about the generalized theoretical concept of the research topic. The qualitative data have empirical applicability, theoretical generalizability and practical usefulness that have threats to the quality of the data. The researcher needs to compare between the empirical findings of the data with the previously conducted research (Fulton, Meyer, 2014). The researcher can ensure the quality of the data findings by maintaining some code of standards and standard instruction for measurement of the collected data. The ambiguous data can be preserved by following the standard procedure in data collection process while interviewing the professors. 6. Data Collection/ Method of Data Analysis The data collection process mentioned in the study helps in better extracting the information and better analysis of the data. The accurate data collected through the data collection procedure helps in driving the research procedure in the appropriate direction. Various sources of data are utilized by the researcher to have a transparent idea about the research process (Hosmer Jr, Lemeshow, Sturdivant, 2013). The researcher will utilize both the primary and secondary sources for collecting the data for conducting the research. The primary source of data will provide raw information about the topic while the secondary data source will help in providing a theoretical background to the research. The data analysis procedure will help in concluding the research. The analyst will use the multiple regression models for the detailed analysis of the collected data. The data analysis of the quantitative data allows the researcher to cross check the previous researchers and qualitative data collected. The multiple regression models will assist the researcher in statistically estimating the relationship existing between the academic performance and demographic character of the African-American student athletics (Krmer, Sonnberger, 2012). 7. Data Collected Will Enables the Researcher to Answer the Research Questions and Contribute To Theory The researcher ill collect the data through personal interviews with the professors and online surveys of the football athletes of various universities. By analyzing the collected data, the researcher will be able to understand the relationship between the academic performance and demographic characteristics among the student athletes (Creswell, 2013). Understanding the relation will help the researcher to utilize the significant area in order to improve the academic performance of the African-American Students. Apart from that, the successfully conducted research will allow the analyst in answering the research questions. Conclusion The entire research focuses on realizing the impact of demographic character on the academic performance of the students. 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