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Topic
Providing more funding to children programs at the neighborhood library
Background
The neighborhood library has different programs for all age groups. These programs are equally funded, however, they do not have the same demand. It seems that younger children use this library more than all other age groups. Therefore, it would be appropriate that children’s programs should receive more program funding.
Purpose of the research
More funding should be allocated to children’s programs as they are the demographic that uses the library more. In order for more funds to be allocated to children’s programs at the neighborhood library, it important that research be conducted to show that children use the neighborhood library more than other age groups.
Use of library defined as enrolment/participation in programs
Here is what you said to me
I think that the first thing that you need to do is to define "use" of the library, for the purpose of your study. What constitutes "use"? For example, I consider myself to be a moderate to heavy user of my local library, but I don't spend a lot of time there. I look up most titles online, submit a request to have them sent to my local branch, and then dash in to check them out. Although I may have checked out 4 or 5 titles, I will have spent less than five minutes in the actual library.
In your case, you are talking about funding of specific programs, so you may want to focus on participation of just those programs. Also, since you mentioned "demand", you will want to measure not only current participation in the programs, but also the unmet demand. For example, if there are only 20 spots available for a particular program, but 50 people wanted to participate, you want to be sure that you don't miss the 30 people who wanted to participate but could not due to space limitations.
Your data collection would need to include (at least):
Age of library user (so that you can divide respondents into age groups)
Library programs that the user is currently attending (to identify current usage)
Library programs that they would attend if space was available (to identify unsatisfied demand)
From this data, you can determine the demand for each program. Since the programs are currently funded equally, you can use a Chi-Square test to determine whether the demand is distributed equally among the programs, in accordance with the current funding scheme. If the null hypothesis was rejected, then you would have shown that the demand is not equal for the various programs, which would support your claim that the funding should be distributed in such a way as to meet the actual demand.
For example, let's say that you survey 100 library patrons, and that there are 4 programs offered. If the demand were distributed evenly across all programs, then you would expect that there would be 25 people interested in each program. You would then compare your actual demand values against this expected value to see how well the actual distribution of demand matches.
It should also be noted that you will need to survey more than just current library participants to measure demand. There could be children in the community (and their parents) who are unaware of the programs that are offered, and who would be interested in participating if they knew. You might need to expand your survey beyond just the library. That is, standing at the door of the library and asking people to take your survey as they enter will not necessarily give you a sample that is representative of the entire community. You might need to try accessing the school system to get your survey into the hands of more children and parents, or perhaps circulate the survey among various activities that children are involved in (sports, for example).
Can you please do a chi test and analysis for me please
