In this essay I aim to analyse quantitative data which is based on the question of What causes negative attitudes towards asylum seekers?

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Quantitative Data Analysis

In this essay I aim to analyse quantitative data which is based on the question of ‘What causes negative attitudes towards asylum seekers?’. I will individually analyse results from a frequency bar chart, a cross-tabulation table, a correlation table, and finally a regression table. Using this variety of data I intend to show that the results obtained in this analysis are too vague and lack suitable reliability to be taken as credible.

The frequency chart above displays the extent to which participants agreed with the statement ‘asylum seekers should be sent home immediately’, however gives no reasons as to why those answers were given. It does not break down the independent variables which may have influenced these beliefs, but rather acts to summarise a large collection of results in visual form representing the attitudes of those who were interviewed.  It fails to give the exact percentages or values of the columns although we are told that n (the number of participants) is 712. It would be more appropriate to then display numerically how many people opted for which answer. We can see that whilst the most popular answer was ‘agree’, the lack of specificity in the chart makes it difficult to say precisely how many people agreed or by what exact percentage ‘agree’ was the most popular choice.  Overall however it is clear the combined percentages in ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ outweigh the combined percentages in ‘strongly disagree’ and ‘disagree’. There are problems in this chart arising from the lack of source as well as the omission of a significance score for the result. The omission of these details seriously hinder the charts utility, rendering it largely irrelevant as a source that can be studied as there is no indication of where the results were obtained from, at what time, and by whom.

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This cross-tabulation table above shows that generally there is a positive correlation between those who complete full time education and disagreement with the statement that” asylum seekers should be sent home”. There is one clear anomaly however. This is exemplified by the participants who left school at 17 yet ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ to an equal or larger extent with the statement in comparison to those who left school at 15 and 16. However it could be seen that it is not to do with age of completing education but rather the age the participants are when undertaking the ...

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