Being a shamistician, rather than a statistician, I’m not sure how much importance to attach to this, but I thought it was interesting enough to share!
The JISC Library Impact Data Project has given us an opportunity to churn through our usage data again and, following on from the last blog post, we’ve been looking at the statistical significance (if any!) of the correlations we’re finding in the data.
The book loan data for the last 5 years of undergrads (who graduated with a specific honour) has a small overall Pearson correlation of -0.17 (see this blog post for an explanation of why it’s negative) with a high statistical significance (p-value of 0). However, when we looked at just the 2009/10 data (which is the period the other project partners are providing data for), we found a stronger correlation (-0.20).
If we go a step further and look at the Pearson correlation each year, there appears to be a possible underlying trend at Huddersfield…
If you accept that there might be a trend there (with the Pearson correlation value increasing over time), then it raises an interesting question… are books becoming an increasingly more important part of achieving a higher grade?
