Term Project: Developing a Research Question

Learning Outcomes: Students will demonstrate the ability to ask geographic questions. Students will demonstrate the ability to develop questions within the

scope of their geographic skills and the assignment. Students will demonstrate they are capable of critical thinking about the

spatial relations between and among people and their places.

Please make sure you go over the content of Lab 4 and Term Project Phase 1 at first so you are familiar with the following:

Overlay, join, and relate tools in the ArcToolbox. Attribute editing and map symbology manipulating. Map editing in the layout view. How to obtain Census data. The integration of Excel spreadsheets with ArcGIS. The creation of maps using this tabular data and Census spatial data.

Part 1: How to Develop a Research Question

Geographic questions can be categorized into those dealing with:-location and extent;-distribution and pattern;-spatial association/interaction;-spatial change.

Types of geographic questions include: (but are not limited to)-Where does it occur?-How much is there of it at particular locations?-What kind of distribution pattern does it have?-Do these things usually occur together in the same locations?-Is it demonstrably linked to other variables?-How has it changed spatially (through time)?

Key categories of information that can be mapped:Count data- the number of items in a given area (ex. Total population)

Summary statistics- statistics that provide a summary of the data. The main category includes measures of central tendency (ex. median income, average income)

Rates- the measure of the frequency of some phenomenon of interest (% of bilingual individuals, sex ratio)

Other things to consider:

Will your map(s) effectively answer your question? Can your question be effectively answered using the unit of analysis

(Dissemination Area- DA, census tracts, etc.)? Look for and address ambiguity/vagueness. Look for and address the insertion of value judgements.

Part 2: Developing your Research Question

In this phase you will reflect on what you have learned in Lab 4 and Phase I to develop a research question.

For this Project, you are being asked to use Dissemination Areas or Census Tracts as your unit of analysis.

Choose a research question that will enable you to map either:

1 variable in (at least) 2 places

OR (at least) 2 variables in 1 place

For example:

Where do we have the highest percentage of the population aged 0 to 14 years in Saskatoon and Toronto?

(One variable: percentage of the population aged 0 to 14 years, two places: Saskatoon and Toronto)

What are patterns for marital status along with household and downwelling situations in the city of Saskatoon?

(Two variables: marital status, household and downwelling, one place: Saskatoon)

The research question should be unique by each student (Plagiarism is not allowed in the term project, any one caught by violating the scholar integrity will face considerable consequences)!!

Remember, keep your research question pithy (clear, straight-forward, and concise), meeting the following requirement: 1 variable for 2 places or 2 variables for 1 place. Keep in mind that in Phase 3 you will present the results of your research, so you want a question that you think will provide an interesting answer about which you can write a short report and create compelling maps.

Please include a short paragraph to explain your research question, but please keep the total words no more than 150. In the paragraph, please specify why you choose the particular city/cities and variables. The explanation can contain the rationale for your question, the accessibility of data, the method you are going to use or the variable you want to calculate from the original census data and so on.

Please also keep the explanation paragraph grammatical. Listing out the key point should be enough.Part 3: Census boundary file

Navigate to the Statistics Canada Website:

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm

Under 2011 Census year, choose Dissemination Areas under Digital Boundary File. Choose ArcGIS (.shp) for the format and click download.

When the download is complete Unzip the downloaded file in your V: drive.

The file should be gda_000a11a_e.zip (ZIP Version, 112954.0kb)

Open ArcGIS. Create a empty map at first.

In the Catalog, connect to a folder you create for your term project. (Please make sure you connect to your own folder every time before you do anything in ArcGIS. This will solve both you and the instructor/ TAs a lot of time to locate your files!!!)

In your own folder, you can copy gda_000a11a_e.zip and unzip it (For those who can not see any shape file in the folder, please make sure you unzip the file at first!!). Add the gda_000a11a_e.shp into you data frame.

Please go over the content of Lab2 and change the projection into NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_13N

As you can see there are many regions in the national boundary. We only want you to focusing on one or two places.

For example: the city of Saskatoon

Open the attribute table of gda_000a11a_e.shp,

In the attribute table menu bar, Table options choose select by attribute

In the selection box, input “CSDNAME” =’Saskatoon’ into the editing dialogue box. You can see that all the regions under the name of Saskatoon has been selected. (Reminder: you may input different name or code for other places, please refer to the census data to find the right code and name for your own study area!)

Please export the selected you selected region to a new shapefile and rename it. The operation can be found in the content of Lab4.

Now, you have the new boundary file for your own study questions. You may have to repeat the above operations if you have more than one study area.

Also, as for the census data, the website: http://dc1.chass.utoronto.ca/census/index.html is the place to download your necessary data, which has been taught in the term project phase one.

Now, you can proceed for the table joint of census data and the digital boundary data (see term project phase one).

Hand in:Please hand in your research question into the blackboard -> term project question.

The hand in file should be only one page long with one sentence of your term project research question and one paragraph explanation (no more than 150 word).

The deadline is 5:00 PM, 10th, Nov., 2016.

Rubrics for Term Project Phase twoThis rubric is only for your information, and will not be completed or returned. If you get failed in the PAWS blackboard for your research question, please contact the TAs group for further information to revise it.

Correct Partly correct

Your Result

Research question length- One sentence long 3 0 or 1

Explanation length- No more than 150 words 3 0 or 1

Research regions as requiredOne or two places 2 0

Research variables as requiredTwo or one variables 2 0

Total (max) 10