Methodology

Research Process

Throughout our research process we made sure to have a process in mind in order to be efficient and accurate. This included having specific archives, libraries, etc. where we would find our primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. For the purpose of having a solid foundation for our hypothesis and conclusions, we believed that JSTOR and the Weinburg Memorial Library were our two best options for gathering information. We were also most acclimated with these two resources as they have been key to our work in this class thus far. Using these, as well as the Affirmative Action plans given to us by Prof. Farry, we were able to craft or narrative surrounding student enrollment at the University of Scranton, and provide evidence which supports our claims.

Digital Tools

The digital tool that helped us analyze the primary source documents that we were utilizing to conduct our research was AntConc, which is a text mining tool that finds trends of word use within a given corpus. Originally, we were going to use this tool to attempt to find specific trends that may have changed within the Affirmative Action plans; however, this did not prove to be useful. Instead, what AntConc showed us was the trend that almost all of the plans were primarily focused on the idea of diversity in staff and faculty, not student enrollment. For example, the second highest counted word in all of the Affirmative Action plans we examined was "job," with 626 instances of use. The word "student" was the fourth most used with 342 instances. Even by just looking at this, it is clear that there seemed to by a much higher emphasis on diversity in areas of employment rather than the student body.