APPENDIX I

How to translate figures into words? This exercise will help you develop your writing skills necessary in describing some statistical data and modifying it into quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Report based on statistics

Write a short report outlining the main findings of a national opinion survey on the British educational system. The results are shown in the tables below and on p. 121

Children Teachers   Parents

The alms of education Q What do you think the main aim of children's education should be? Is it...     to prepare them for everyday life?

to prepare them for a career?     to help them develop their true selves?

None of these   Don't know

Difficult issues   Q Should teachers discuss issues suchasnuclear disarmament if pupils ask about it?   YES     Q Should religious education be obligatory?   YES   Q Should parents have more say in school curricula?   YES     Q If parents disapprove of the way their children are being educated at school, should they have the right to take them away and educate them at home?   YES

Standard of education   Q How do you rate your teachers, or your children's teachers?   Q Overall, how do you rate the standard of secondary education in schools?   Excellent   Good     Average   Poor   Don't know

School discipline   Q Is the level of discipline in your school or your children's school...     too strict?       not strict enough?     about right?       Don't know     Q Do you approve of corporal punishment?     Q Do you approve of school uniform?

tv Times Magazine survey by Audience Selection. Audience Selection interviewed throughout Great Britain 426 parents and 204 teachers of secondary schoolchildren. and 215 pupils currently attending secondary schools. Quota controls (controlled samples from different age and class groups, etc) were imposed on boththeparent and pupil samples to ensure their representativeness.

Notes

1. The function of a report of this kind is to organise the facts so that the most important findings become clear to the reader. The function is not to systematically reproduce every detail of the statistics since the diagram does that in a more accessible way.
2. It may be appropriate to express a reaction to a finding, eg 'It comes as something of a surprise to find...' 'Predictably...'and, in some cases, (such as the popularity of school uniform), to suggest a reason for a result.

The choice of expression for reporting results should be the one which makes the clearest impression. For example, 73% may be expressed approximately as 'three out of four'; 48% as 'almost half and 3% as 'only three

1. in every hundred'.

Varying the choice of expression and the sentence structure will help prevent the report from becoming monotonous.

1. The introduction should state clearly how the findings were arrived at. This information can be found at the foot of the tables.

The different issues should be dealt with in order of importance and linked together logically. For example, the results of the section on the aims of education might be appropriately followed by those from the section on the standards of education.

Don't forget a brief conclusion.

Begin your report as follows:

In a survey carried out by Audience Selection, on behalf of TV Times Magazine, 426 parents, 204 teachers and 215 secondary school pupils...