Dylan Teng Senior Project

Today is the last day of the senior project. I would like to say thank you to myself for all the efforts I have made. "Nothing else in the world...not all the armies...is so powerful as an idea whose time has come." Victor Hugo, The Future of Man.  In other words, workers have always dominated the times. Their figures travel through all times and places, silent and noble. I am grateful for my efforts. 12:00-5:00 PM 5 Hours

 I finished some grammar corrections and narrative reflection. Ultimately, I believe that this is like conceiving and experimenting with a successful methodology that can be replicated in large numbers and continuously fine-tuning it on the way to achieving the goal so that it has the greatest effect, with a lot of effort up front and for all times at the end. 12:00-4:40PM 4h 40 mins

 Today (Friday) is the second performance of the musical, which I seem to have forgotten to mention last post. I was very excited to be introduced to a different art form and have a lot of fun with it. Regarding the paper, I printed out a hard copy as a better way to proofread and find errors, and was lucky enough to receive some feedback from Tom Morgan. After making some formatting adjustments, I'm going to put the references in the appendix and make some final linguistic refinements. 10:00 AM-3:00PM  5 Hours

For me, who had not been exposed to statistics prior to this school year, AP Statistics, even if it only consisted of an introduction to statistics, was an enormous help. The way it reshaped my understanding of other theories, as well as real-life practice, is unparalleled.  As I decided to carry out this research, I read a great deal of literature from predecessors and discovered that the task was more difficult than I anticipated. Therefore, the basic application of statistics and the initial understanding of SPSS are what I consider to be the biggest gains, if only in terms of knowledge rather than competence. Likewise, the application of observation, research, and theory, the ability to locate information from vast literature, and the ability to focus on details are also skills I am now beginning to realize. In my capacity as a member of the community, I am constantly searching for something I can contribute. From the exploration, design, and planning stages to the implementati...

 Completed the Exit Interview! Discussed the overall project process with numerous faculty members and shared specific insights into the results and its implications in terms of both merit and interpretation from a community perspective. I am excited to be able to leave something for the school before I go and to better understand some of the current aspects of this community from this point of view. There are still some specific language refinements left that will be revised in the following days based on feedback from the faculty. 8:30-12:00 AM 3.5 hours

Finally finished the first draft of the paper! Exported the data from SPSS to the paper today and analyzed it to answer the questions I asked earlier and found statistical significance for many of the differences in the demographics. Rearranged the paper to make its order easier to follow. 10:00 AM to 3:50 PM 4:50 to 5:50 PM 6 hours 50 mins

The most important step of the analysis was successfully conducted and completed in the corresponding paper. I found that rather than comparing with national normative such data that is too general to be applied to individual school-specific characteristics, it was more important to compare with ourselves - are there statistically significant differences in mental health indicators across demographic variables? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. 10:30 AM-3:50 PM 5 hours 20 mins

Got a good chunk of the paper written today, with some final analysis and discussion left to do. Tried using jMetrik, an open-source psychometric software. It was a huge help - the first user-friendly Rasch Measurement software and it runs on macOS. Meanwhile, I finally decided to use Item Response Theory (IRT) because it is suitable for models where the indicators are discrete variables and the latent variables are continuous. In its plain form, factors such as the "difficulty" of the options and the discrimination of each items are estimated as parameters. 9:30 AM- 3:50 PM (Yes I didn't go to lunch) 6 hours 20 minutes

Today is an attempt at Rasch measurement. According to some tutorials, I found that even if you don't know R language, you can use SPSS to do Rasch analysis and compare the "difficulty" (i.e., the probability of choosing a certain option) of various items with the established national normative step value, i.e., you can get a visualization of whether the benchmark is met or not. visualization. It is nice to have the most superficial understanding of another way of analysis. 8:50-11:50 AM 1:00-3:00 PM 8:30-9:30 PM 6 hours

     I always shudder to think that a week has passed and the work done seems far from the complexity and perfection I envisioned at the time. Of course, I had to remind myself that I am only a high school student, and that I need not be overly ambitious. Some of the content--such as the methods and theories of statistics--was far beyond the depth and basic level required in high school, while others needed extensive literature reading and search skills. I eventually decided to cut out some of the reliability and validity tests, because even if I could do the "analysis" in a step-by-step manner as described in the book or guide, I would have learned no knowledge or understanding of the principles behind it, and a complete set of such analyses would not be necessary in light of the time constraints.      It is nice to see what I have attained: a better knowledge of SPSS and other software, as well as an understanding of some of the algorithms behind them, as...

 I started the preparation for the presentation. First, I identified the questions to be answered with Seth and Heidi, and selected some data that would be of interest to everyone. By processing the data for the scales, I obtained the total score for each psychographic scale and compared it to the cut off points it was designed for, and finally categorized the students who fit their range to obtain the final percentages. The creation of slides and data visualization were completed. 9:00-11:00 AM 4:00-6:00 PM 7:30-11:00PM  0:20-3:00 AM (following day)

Statistical analysis was performed for each scale. Due to the complexity and depth of statistical literacy, I planned to skip some of the reliability and validity tests and perform only the basic reliability tests. Also, I recode each option of the scale so that the scores obtained from the scale can match the criteria generated by the designer, and edit the items by dimension for the different groups algorithmically. Regression analyses were planned for each dimension of mental health grouped by demographic attributes and tested for statistical significance. 9:00-11:20 AM 5:00-9:10 PM

Today is the first step in the processing and visualization of the data. After establishing the reliability of the scale through SPSS and R, some basic data and demographic variables are entered into a data visualization site and appropriate models are built to present the corresponding data of interest. Returning to the previously established question: do these data give a specific answer? And what questions specifically should be answered that are most worthy of displaying while people are most interested from a community perspective? This will need to be discussed with Derek and Seth tomorrow. 9:00-11:30 AM  12:30-2:30 PM 4:00-5:00 PM

 I began to analyze the data and prepare for the presentation. The first step was to identify the previously established questions. What questions do I need these data to answer and what results do I need to show? I categorized the scales in the questionnaire to establish a few basic groups of data, and studied previous research on this type of instrument to begin cleaning and filtering out the invalid data. Rasch Analysis is a helpful first step - comparing items to previously created benchmarks with statistical operations, but the exact rationale remains to be studied. Time: 11:00-12:00 AM  1:00-3:15 PM 7:30-9:30 PM