Global Posts

My name is Isabella Olson, and I am a senior at Longwood University. I will graduate in the fall of 2024 from the Comier Honors College with a degree in Criminal Justice/Criminology and Sociology.

I grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I have two very loving and supportive parents, along with three, amazing siblings. I have a passion for reading, traveling, and being active. I love working with others and being a team player. I grew up playing soccer and those experiences have taught me leadership, communication, and good work ethic skills.

I came to Longwood in Fall of 2021. Over these past two years I have had amazing experiences and opportunities. I am the President of the Women’s Rugby Football Club and a sister of Alpha Beta Psi. I am also a brother of Lambda Alpha Epsilon. These organizations have brought great volunteer experiences, academic opportunities, and all around have help me grow as a person.

Within this e-portfolio, you will find my significant academic works from my time in the Criminal Justice/Criminology and Sociology department.

This course was essential to my success as a sociology major because it introduced me to skills such as the application of quantitative and statistical techniques to sociological data. There was questionnaire construction, coding, sampling, building/maintaining data sets, probability, statistical distributions, hypothesis testing, and theoretical modeling. I learned how to explain basic concepts of social statistics, summarize numeric data by computing descriptive statistics (e.g. mean and variance), and created tables and graphs. For each procedure, we completed calculations by hand through the use of a calculator and computer methods using SPSS and Rstudios ®. There were tested hypotheses using the probability theory. I was taught the differences between various statistical techniques and how to identify the proper technique for given research questions and data.

These skills are useful to my career because statistics is the primary analytical method in sociology and many other social sciences. My statistical ability will impact my performance in graduate programs as well as any potential research I choose to do. Statistics also has practical value for people who pursue non-academic careers because some jobs require experience in data management and analysis (e.g. federal and state government jobs, and marketing positions). Social statistics is the field of statistical science that deals with the study of social phenomena and in particular human behavior in a social environment. This consists of any kind of human activities, societies, and nations and their impacts on culture, education, and other areas. 

Data analysis was emphasized for organization, summarizing, and interpreting data for scientific research. Social statistics deals with the application of statistical methodology. It can help me in the areas of survey methodology, official statistics, sociology, psychology, political science, criminology, public policy, marketing research, demography, education, economics, and many more. I learned important concepts needed to understand statistics in research because it stands out. I also became a better consumer of statistics in my own life. Mastering the materials learned from this course can help me improve my status as a job candidate.

In this class, I also learned about conceptualization, research design, concept formation, data collection, data reduction, data analysis, and data interpretation for both sociology and criminology. I learned about both basic research, applied research, and methods of conducting program evaluation. The principal objective of this course is to provide you with a basic understanding of social scientific research qualitative and quantitative methodologies with an emphasis on social science research. I learned how to analyze categorical data which helped measure attitudes and opinions within the data we collected.

This year, we worked with the data we collected from last year’s surveys with Dr. Lee Bidwell’s class to see how parents in our community respond to specific parental engagement programs. This type of research is often called an assessment. We specifically targeted parents and caregivers of children from three to five years old, who are enrolled in Head Start in Farmville and Buckingham County. We learned how to conduct the data into SPSS and ® to understand the effects of our independent variables (which varied) among the dependent variable (parent engagement). I conducted research on how the child’s race affected the overall enjoyment of the activities. I came to find that the child’s race had no effect on the enjoyment of the activities. Overall I learned a lot about how to conduct research as a sociology major. The material I learned will help me prepare for going into my career. 

Throughout this project, I have learned not only more about child sexual abuse but skills in research and developing a final product using the research that I gathered. For this project, I created a brochure that was meant to inform parents of elementary school children and more specifically 3rd to 5th graders. My brochure was meant to be very user-friendly and just be informative and simple for the parents who are reading so they can have a better understanding of the topic. 

I learned a lot about child sexual abuse and all that goes into it while researching for this project. I gained a better understanding of what constitutes child abuse and what you should look for in those around you and your child. Child abusers often use some form of grooming in order to persuade their victim into complying and not telling anyone about what is going on. I also learned more about the characteristics of those who are abused and those who are the abusers and the relationship that occurs between them in order for the abuse to occur. The effects of the abuse on the victim was also something that I learned more about. 

In order to improve my project, I could have used more academic sources in my brochure. My goal was to make it very easy for the reader to understand with basic information that informs them about the topic. The brochure was organized in a certain way that began with the definition of child abuse. I could have included more information about the topic itself and what resources that parents could use if they find that their child is being abused. 

I was able to develop more research skills in order to develop a product that contains informational material. This will help me create any sort of informational product in the future or for any employer. This project also helped me be able to go through the process of creating something informational for people to learn from.

Over the course of this semester, I have taken the class Stats in the Social Sciences which is a beginner course in statistics in the social sciences. We have learned a variety of statistical tests that helped us analyze, interpret, and understand the significance of our data. Not only did we learn how to conduct these tests by coding them into our computers but also how to perform them by hand. This course has expanded my knowledge greatly in terms of statistics in the social sciences and has taught me how statistics come into play in order to read and understand the data.

In Stats in the Social Sciences, we were taught how to use the statistical systems, R-Studio and SPSS. While using these systems we learned how to code and recode variables in order to obtain the data that we desired. In order to use R-Studio, we had to enter codes in order to receive our information. These codes made it possible for us to run tests such as ANOVA, T-tests, Regression, Correlation, finding mean and standard deviation, and Chi-squared. We were then taught how to read, analyze, and understand the data that these tests produced. This required critical thinking because the data can be difficult to read. When using SPSS, we learned how to input information into the system, code and recode variables, and interpret graphs and other data that was shown. For several of these tests, we were tasked with determining the significance, or lack thereof, of the data. In order to do this we had to analyze the data and be able to tell if the data was or was not significant at the .05, .01, and .001 levels. The significance of the data helps to answer our research questions by confirming or denying if it is in fact significant data. Both of these statistical systems will be useful to have in my back pocket if I am conducting other research because it is a quicker way of obtaining the data that you are seeking and can help you better understand your data. 

We were not only taught how to use these statistical systems in order to conduct tests but we were also taught how to conduct these tests by hand. We were shown how to do independent and dependent sample t-tests by hand which requires plugging data into formulas and doing math in order to compare the t-ratio with the critical value. We were able to do this by determining the degrees of freedom and the level of significance which again helped us to better understand the data. In order to better understand the significance of our data we also learned about p-values and how to compare them to the levels of significance and determine if the data is or is not significant. We were also taught to interpret the null and research hypothesis and how to analyze them to understand if we retain either hypothesis or reject it which again helped to interpret the data we produced through the test. We were also taught how to conduct one-way ANOVA tests by hand. This test produced the sum of squares and the f-ratio, both of which measure variation in some form. Through the steps that we learned we were then able to read and interpret what our data meant and again be able to retain or reject the null or research hypothesis and determine the significance between means. 

Two more tests that we were taught by hand are the one-way and two-way chi-squared tests and the correlation test. For the chi-squared tests, we were tasked with doing math, setting up a summary table, finding the degrees of freedom, comparing the chi-squared value to the critical value table, and again determining if we should reject or retain our null or research hypothesis and the significance of the data. Lastly, we were taught two formulas in order to determine if there was a strong or weak and positive or negative correlation. In order to do this we were tasked with finding the r statistic which helped us determine the correlation of the data. Using another formula we were able to determine if the data was or was not significant and if we retain or reject the null or research hypothesis. 

In the future, if I am conducting research again I will be able to pull from the information  that I have learned in this class in order to interpret and analyze the data that I would have. Being  able to use R-Studio and SPSS is an advantage that I will now have that not all students have when graduating college. A future employer may potentially see that as a benefit to hiring. In order to best understand your data being able to determine the significance of it is extremely important and I have been taught how to do so in several different ways. All of these tests and both statistical systems are ways in which you can help answer any research question that includes an independent and dependent variable and better understand your data and potentially find answers that you are looking for.

Hello! My FLE project is based upon prevention of child sex abuse. My project is a short video that would be shown to k-5th graders with the title of the video being “C is for Consent”. Navigate my page to see the video itself, my research analysis and my reflection of the project.

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFgaFN9hew/wMf1k6aLa70As5oVFtxVXg/edit?utm_content=DAFgaFN9hew&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

The family violence that I want to address in my project is sexual abuse against children. More specifically, sexual abuse of children that their parents or immediate family perpetrates. The reason I want to address this topic in my project is because I feel like it is largely overlooked by much of society and can lead to an array of issues in the later parts of the lives of the children who are affected by the abuse directly and indirectly. The audience in the community that I plan to target with my informational project is parents with elementary school aged children. The reason I am choosing this audience is because I feel like they would benefit most by hearing the effects of this type of abuse as well as the signs that you should look for to ensure that this kind of behavior isn’t happening in their own homes.