Weaknesses
of Our Study
A few students were unable to be surveyed
based on schedule conflicts, such as a full time PSEOP schedule.
As well, another weakness was that the mean number of
tardies per student for North Olmsted High School for the 2012-2013
school year was obtained from the attendance office.
Since the actual data per student was not able to be
collected, the standard deviation was estimated based on the skew of
the data. Since this is
only an approximate standard deviation, the true value may have
differed, possibly causing a different result.
There are other variables that could have contributed to the
tardiness of the students such as weather and family issues.
However, since neither of these can be controlled, we had to
assume that they did not have much variation from year to year.
So, if this year had unfavorable weather like rain and
snowstorms, then this could have affected the tardiness of students.
Extrapolation
This data could be extrapolated to the entire
North Olmsted High School population.
As well, this data could be extrapolated to similar
populations, in high schools where climate is fairly similar, and
the schedule was made earlier by about 25 minutes.
Further
Work in Topic
Since the schedule is changing yet again next year, to a later start time, from 7:20 to 8:00, then a follow up study could be conducted, comparing tardies again to determine whether a later start time will affect the mean number of tardies adversely. Meaning that since the start time is becoming later next year, testing could be done to see if an adverse of the relationship observed when the schedule became earlier would be gotten.