indicates my findings and what the other graphs look like.
When Jude[1] gave us the CARR[2] assignment, my main concern was my limited experience with Microsoft Excel. The only time I ever work on Excel is during my music library shifts at RMR[3]. Compiling the music catalogue simply entails numbering and listing the albums and tracks onto an Excel document, that’s it.
The most challenging thing I have ever done on Excel is conduct a content analysis on newspaper clippings as part of a research project in my second year. Believe me, it sounds more hectic than it actually was.
So it was pretty much of a surprise (not to mention a major frustration) when just researching for the data itself proved to be a mission (and a half). We had a seminar on CARR before Jude gave us the assignment. Going on my lecture notes I figured http://www.statssa.gov.za/. would be a good place to start.
I could not believe just how useless this site was. They have the population statistics, but the only thing is, they are according to provinces and not cities or towns. Brilliant.
So I just decided to shift my focus for a while onto the other aspect of the assignment. Finding the crime statistics was less of a headache. It turned out that everything I needed was on http://www.saps.gov.za/. But then I still had the specific populations to find.
First I just googled, and all sorts of junk came my way. I couldn’t quite figure out which population statistics to go with. I didn’t know when they were released or if the sites they were on were in fact credible sources.
Then Melissa[4] and I tried doing things the good old fashion way- pouring over census publications at the library. No luck there either. Then it hit me- why not search for the data on the municipal sites of the specific towns.
I found some statistics and was ready to run with them, until Jude told us that the population statistics were in fact conveniently listed on an Excel document on http://www.statssa.gov.za/. So I went back to were I had started. Turned out the site wasn’t as useless as I had thought it was.
After about another hour of agony, searching the labyrinth of a site, I finally found the municipal population statistics. Only problem was that they were listed according to municipal codes. This is where Galen[5] comes in and “saves the day” (well at least that’s what he keeps telling himself). He found the codes and we correlated them with the population data I had found. Good team work.
Once again, strangely enough it wasn’t so hectic working on Excel. Well, I must admit Lauren[6] did help me a little (in exchange for helping her find the statistics). After a while, I found that my little experience working with the RMR music catalogue actually came in handy. I figured out how to calculate the per capita for each city, without having to re-type the formula every time. Just click & drag; I do this all the time on the music catalogue.
This gave me the confidence to play around a little with Excel. Its amazing the things it can do. Did you know that you don’t need to redo your graphs if you have entered the wrong figures? You just edit the list and the graph shifts accordingly. Wow.
The findings weren’t what I expected. It turns out that Grahamstown is supposedly more dangerous than Johannesburg. I don’t know. I’m still not sold on this one (even though it is my own research findings telling me this).
I think maybe the results might have been a whole lot different if we had listed all the crimes, and not just sampled a few. And we do need to consider the different populations. Grahamstown’s sparse population means that no matter how few our crimes there are, they will appear concentrated. Unlike in Johannesburg were the population is 3 225 309. Maybe we need another CARR assignment to investigate this further.
Anyway, that outlines my adventurous journey through my first CARR assignment in New Media.
[1] Our New Media theory lecturer
[2] Computer Assisted Research and Reporting
[3] Rhodes Music Radio station
[4] cloudsinmycoffee-meg.blogspot.com
[5] confessionsofajournstudent.blogspot.com
[6] lauri-seeing-stars.blogspot.com
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