Prediction
I predict that the hypothesis number one will be proven correct because broadsheet newspapers are aimed for people with slightly higher intellect therefore suggesting longer word may be used because usually more intellect words contain more letters.
I believe that there will be a noticeable difference in the length of the words in tabloid and broadsheet newspapers meaning that this hypothesis will be dismissed in my prediction.
Results
These are the papers from which I will be obtaining my results from:
●The Sun (Tabloid)
○The Daily Telegraph (Broadsheet)
Here are the results which I have obtained from these articles:
Here are the mean median and mode word lengths for the papers:
The results are plotted on a scatter graph on the next page:
From this graph we can see how the two papers compare. The tabloid newspaper has more words containing 1,4,5,6,9 and 11 letters. The broadsheet has more words containing 2,3,7,8 and 10 letters; they both have only one 12 letter word. We can see that they both follow the same trend, this can be seen on the graph by looking at the points where the line climbs and drops. Towards the end of the graph (8, 9, 10, 11, 12) they have very similar amounts of words containing that many letters, only one off each other max. The biggest differences are seen between the numbers 2 and 7. The tabloid has considerably more 4 letter words and considerably less 7 letter words. I believe that by looking at these results hypothesis number two could be proven right but it can still be investigated with more depth.
We should now look at the averages:
From this we can see that they are very similar, the only big difference is the mode. This shows us that there is little noticeable difference.
Analysis
From my results I can see that the difference in the lengths of words in tabloid newspapers and broadsheet newspapers do vary very slightly to show that a tabloid newspaper uses longer words than a broadsheet. But the differences aren’t large enough to say that hypothesis two is likely to be correct.
The first hypothesis is likely to be incorrect because the results show that there is very little noticeable difference and that the difference there is shows that the tabloid newspaper has longer words.
The second hypothesis “The average length of words in a tabloid newspaper are longer” is likely to be incorrect because as I mentioned earlier there is little noticeable difference but as I have also mentioned the difference suggests that a tabloid newspaper uses longer words but this is a very small sample when compared to all the words in the newspaper and also all the different news papers so this hypothesis is likely to be incorrect.
The third hypothesis “There is little noticeable difference between the average lengths of the words” is likely to be correct because the results I have gathered show that the difference in the length of words is very small and because it is from a very small sample then it is likely to be come an even smaller gap when more and more words from more and more papers are used.
Although I could dismiss hypotheses 1 and 2 it would be unreasonable because I need to realise that I’m looking at a very small sample when compared to all the words used in tabloid and newspaper samples, which is why a difference of 7 letters on total or a higher average of 1 isn’t enough when performing the investigation on this scale to say that a tabloid newspaper has longer words.
My predictions were proven wrong because I said the tabloid would have the shorter words which in fact had the longer words and I also said there would be a noticeable difference which there wasn’t.
I have come proven that there is likely to be no noticeable difference in the length of words in tabloid and broadsheet newspapers.
Conclusion
In my plan I introduced three hypotheses which I have investigated in the previous pages of this project. I have decided to dismiss hypothesis 0 and 1 because of the results I have obtained, thus meaning that I have concluded that within this investigation there is little noticeable difference in the length of words in a broadsheet newspaper and a tabloid newspaper. This may not be the case because my investigation is very small, but if the trend continues then very little difference in the length of the words will be noticeable.
When I plotted both sets of results on a graph I was able to compare them very easily.
So I have concluded that my third hypothesis is most likely top be true “There is little noticeable difference between the average lengths of the words”.
Summary
I performed the investigation using a stratified sample; the sample was stratified because both the articles were the first article in the paper. The sample used is extremely small compared to the population it is representing, considering there are a lot more words than one hundred in an article never mind the entire paper. So if the data was recorded for all the articles in the all the broadsheet and tabloid newspapers it would be a lot more accurate, but this sample still provides a representation of the entire group of paper
The investigation wasn’t that fair because I only used the first 100 words from the papers first article meaning that I only compared very small amounts of the paper.
