Tuesday, 2 July 2013

How to collect reliable data...


How to collect reliable data…

 

Editor’s letters in women’s and men’s magazines

To gather reliable data from female and male magazines, a variety of sources (magazines) are needed, as many magazines have a specific purpose or are aimed at a certain audience. By gathering a collection of magazines, there is no possibility of magazine biased happening or data being too similar. To increase the reliability of data of magazine data, I would collect magazines over time. By collecting magazine data just from a certain period, for example, Christmas or New Year, the data found would be very similar, most likely sharing similar context and covering similar topics.

 

Brian Cox’s Tweets

To gather reliable data on Brian Cox’s tweets you would have to follow his account for a long period of time. Gathering data from his tweets over a short period of time can lead to biased results. Also, the tweets may only be about current affairs, if something drastic has happened, the data would suggest Brian only tweets about this, when in fact, the subject of his tweets may vary. Brian’s tweets must also be collected at a variety of times to be reliable. Collecting data from what he tweets from 7am-10am may not be representative of what he tweets. Data at this time may be happy and bright, to start the day off well, whereas tweets from 7pm – 10pm may be more reflective of the days happenings.

1 comment:

  1. Good. Might the extra comparability be an advantage by collecting Xmas issues? Very good range of considerations for reliablity.

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