Assignment: In a group of 3, research and write a complete statistics news story about a significant behavioral change
over time among high school students. Your story will be built upon observations from Minnesota Student Survey
statistics, researched quotes from experts to offer causative statements about the statistics, and supporting facts
drawn from research.
Required elements: headline, byline (By name 1, name 2, and name 3—no colon), story text, graphic.
Headline is in present/continuous tense, without articles. Body of the story is in past tense.
Within story text you must have: a Lede—first sentence of the text, and its own paragraph. Ledes probably do
not contain any attributions because they are general. Who/what/where/when, in order of importance. Lede probably
will not make a causative claim, because causative claim is not the primary ‘what’ of the story. Lede is about your most
important finding. Body Paragraph/Sentences then follow order of importance. Aggressively reduce all text. Most
paragraphs are one sentence. Aggressively attribute; every sentence should have an attribution except the lede.
8-15 body paragraph/sentences. Order body points/paragraphs/sentences in order of importance. No
conclusion; just run out of things to say. Each of these is very narrowly framed and delivers a single fact or idea.
At least two causative statements, attributed to an authoritative source, that suggest reasons for the statistical
trend you have identified. These are speculation (though speculation by experts) so they go later in the story and
shouldn’t be in the lede (though they may be part of the headline.)
Supporting facts (if needed) are statements that deliver information necessary to full understanding of trend
and cause. They must be attributed. In rare cases supporting facts are both necessary to full understanding and obvious
common knowledge; in this case the attribution can be omitted.
Methodology statement All journalism based on survey data devotes a paragraph to describing the statistical
source. This should fall in the last part of the story. It should describe the MSS in brief, clear terms in order to establish
its authority.
Graphic with two-sentence caption a non-decorative chart or plot of significant data trends discussed in your
piece, formatted, captioned, and text-wrapped into your final product. The graphic may combine various pieces of data
or highlight one significant part of the data. The graphic may re-use statements that are covered in the story; it need not
be unique.
Laws lead to dramatic increase in suburban teens’ seatbelt use
Or
Teen seatbelt use continues dramatic increase
By Pikup Andropov, Irtzel Twang, and Heywood J. Buzzoff
According to the Minnesota Student Survey, teen drivers in Hennepin County have dramatically increased
seatbelt use over the past twelve years.
Over the course of the past 12 years the number of suburban teen drivers of both genders who report that they
always use seatbelts when they drive has increased nearly XX% from XX to YY.
Though boys still use seatbelts at a rate lower than girls in every situation, boys increased their rate of seatbelt
use the most, adding 23% between 2001 and 2010.
Transportation Secretary Rachel Donavan said the increase is largely due to state laws mandating seatbelt use
for drivers.
48 states, including Minnesota, currently require a driver to wear a seatbelt or face a fine.
Girls use seatbelts…
(etc/more)
Basics of Writing This Way
Rearrange as much as possible to avoid commas and improve clarity. Rearrangement is the best tool to create clarity.
Do not concern yourself with repetition of attribution phrases (such as ‘According to the Minnesota Student Survey.’)
For purposes of this assignment, source people rather than the websites or publications where you found their quotes.
Indent paragraphs with no space between.
Your audience: casual but interested newspaper readers in our community.
Stick to facts and reported statements. Do not try to improve your appeal, aside from ensuring clarity and precision.
Hints and Suggestions
Phase I: choose a topic and a question
Route 1:
Choose a ‘teen issue’ you care about (reducing sexual experimentation; improving nutrition; preventing
bullying; increasing exercise). Theorize a trendline (sexual experimentation is increasing; nutrition is worsening; bullying
is rarer than it was but is still a problem; students spend too much time indoors, on a computer.) Examine the MSS for
supporting statistics; move on to phase 2.
Route 2:
Browse the survey tables for interesting questions, then hunt for trendlines you can use.
Phase II: identify a statistical trendline
Determine whether state or Hennepin County is a better database for your inquiry (you may choose to use both; you
may choose to look at Wayzata High School instead.)
Open the survey tables for multiple years or for the earliest and latest year and do a quick comparison of percentages in
various samples to look for a trendline. Once you have found a trendline or have chosen an issue, make a systematic and
careful study of the statistics to confirm that you want to work with that question.
Phase III: gather and collate data
Using extreme care, transfer the relevant data into a combined table, list, or spreadsheet. Errors often occur here.
Analyze the data lines. Constantly discuss your logic and arithmetic to prevent mistakes. Remember that important
tendlines do not always have slope; if a trend of behavior is flat despite years of effort to change it, that is significant
enough to warrant a story.
It is at this phase that you might choose to compress or combine parts of the data to make presentation of the trendline
simpler and clearer.
Phase IV: theorize about causation; research sourcing to support or refute that causative theory
Not every trendline is caused directly and simply by something else. Use caution when choosing a causative posture for
your story. A common error is to latch on to causation that isn’t well-supported. Another common error is to grab any
old quotation that seems relevant to your trendline and plunk it in the text. Make sure your causatives come from
people with strong authority to comment. Causatives need not be people reacting to the particular data you are using;
they may be reacting to other data or to broader, more general, or more speculative ideas. On the other hand, MSS
questions are all on topics of great importance, so plenty of causative commentary will be available if you search
carefully.
Phase V: Write your story
Remember that newswriting is a simplified, cut-down writing style. Revise a lot. Do not repeat yourself. Do not overlap
sentences. Avoid commas, subordinate clauses, or long statements. Remain objective. Your job is to present your
findings, which are the work of other people, and then to let the reader decide.
Relevant terms
Survey a general term to describe a large-scale research process and the reporting of data from that process
Questionnaire the actual document that is used to gather data from people; also called ‘instrument.’
Respondent a person taking the questionnaire
Sample The group of people used to gather data. Samples are representative of larger populations
Cohort A group of people who ‘move together.’ May or may not be equivalent to a sample or sub-sample. Grades and
gender are examples of cohorts. Note that cohorts sometimes match up with samples—for example, Hennepin County
sixth-grade boys in 2007 were Hennepin County ninth-grade boys in 2010, though, because of the MSS’s practices, the
students in those samples were not necessarily the same people.
Sub-sample a sub-group of the larger sample. If you want to report data for a certain group of people (such as female
Native American seniors) you must have a sufficiently large number of those people in your sample.
Representative Sample a group of people large enough to produce statistically valid results for the whole population.
Statistics and surveys work by gathering information from a group of people who effectively represent the whole
population. Asking a question of an entire group is only slightly more accurate than asking the same questions of a
sample, though working with a representative sample means that results are reported as ratios rather than numbers.
Sampling error a phenomenon that taints a survey by skewing the attitudes or experiences of the sample. A students
who wants to report the behavior of WHS sophomores needs to gather a representative sample of all sophomores.
Circulating a questionnaire in AP European classes will gather sophomores, but not a representative sample of them.
Table in the MSS, a group of related questions.
Question a single inquiry that may have multiple answers or responses.
Options the choices a respondent might make in answering a question.
Methodology the various choices made by the survey creators.
As you identify a possible question to research and present, closely examine the wording of options and question to
identify any changes that may have occurred over time. This will ensure that you don’t make an “apples” mistake.
the Apples to No Apples error
For a survey instrument like the MSS to be useful and valid, the same questions must be asked over the long term. This
isn’t always possible; new issues come up. Beginning in 2007, the survey added three new questions dealing with IEPs,
free/reduced lunch, and transiency. You can’t use these as primary questions because you are required to use four
cycles of data. You could use the data from these questions as secondary support for a causative claim.
The Apples to Oranges error
Beware changes in questions or options.
even conflict in data. Most of the survey
have a small not indicating a change, so be
alert. In these two samples, we can see
that a slight change has occurred between
2001 on the left and 2010 on the right.
(you can probably figure out why the
change was made.) It’s likely that the 2001
question yielded less reliable data on this
question.
They can create uncertainty or
questions that are inconsistent