Assessment

Instructions: You need to complete the following request set by a fictitious absent- minded professor. You can find the dataset on the course website in the course Assessments area. You need to provide the Data, Method, Results and Conclusions paragraphs. Your assessment must be submitted through Turnitin and must follow the writing guidelines prescribed by the American Psychological Association (6th edn).

"Dear student,

I've triple booked myself and can't complete the analysis on fear of crime on the Gold Coast. Can you have a look at the data and have a go at knocking something up? No pressure, none at all, but Council is extremely interested in our findings and a substantial funding opportunity may hinge on our work.

The data set contains information collected from the 2014 Gold Coast Community Survey, which was a self-administered mail survey designed to examine residents' fear of crime and to identify factors associated with individuals' perceptions. The variables believed to affect residents' fear of crime include demographic characteristics (i.e., respondent's age, gender, income level, and education level), source of news and information about crime on the Gold Coast, and community characteristics (i.e., measures of social cohesion and collective efficacy). Note that participant demographics are in line with the broader Gold Coast population from which the sample was drawn.

There were a number of issues in which Council is interested. You need to explore these (and use inferential tests, if they want to take action they won't be able to move forward on the back of descriptive statistics alone!). But if you find anything else noteworthy, you should definitely flag it.

Remember, the Conclusions section cannot have any statistical gobbledegook and needs to be understandable to an intelligent adult. It contains a concise statement of the meaning of the findings, not just a summary of the preceding statistics.

FEAR OF CRIME ON THE GOLD COAST 1

Existing Paragraphs

Research Question

The Gold Coast is often characterised by the news media as the crime capital of Queensland. Public debate on how to respond to the apparent crime problem and corresponding high levels of fear is often based on anecdotal evidence. There is a corresponding need, therefore, for empirical evidence to refute or reinforce Council's strategies designed to address fear of crime among our community residents. To that end, we sought to answer the following three research questions:

1. Are demographic characteristics of community residents related to fear of crime?

2. Is the source of news and information about crime on the Gold Coast related community resident's fear of crime?

3. Are community characteristics related to resident's fear of crime?

Data

Methods

Results

Conclusion