9 Week 9: First graded assignment

The final plotti8ng assignments are free assignments. You’ll receive a dataset and a research question. Your task is to draw a graph with which you can answer the research question. You get to decide which graph you draw - but don’t choose your graph willy-nilly. We’ll discuss your graphs in class.

The dataset for the first free assignment, PortugueseHeritageLanguage.csv, contains data from a project conducted at the Institute of Multilingualism. The project in question was a longitudinal one with three data collections that investigated (among other thing) the development of the narrative skills in Portuguese in children of Portuguese heritage living in German- and French-speaking Switzerland as well as in a comparison group of Portuguese children living in Portugal.

The dataset contains the following pieces of information:

  • VPNID: The child’s project ID. Each child occurs three times in the dataset (three data collections).
  • NumberOfLanguages: The number of languages the child speaks.
  • InputPortugueseSchool: How much Portuguese does the child speak in school? (questionnaire item, ranging from 0 to 100%)
  • PortugueseFather, PortugueseMother: How well do the child’s father and mother speak Portuguese? (parents’ self-assessment, ranging from 1 (worst) to 6 (best))
  • PortugueseParents: The sum of PortugueseFather and PortugueseMother.
  • EducationFather, EducationMother: A higher number reflects a higher level of parental education.
  • EducationParents: Sum of EducationFather and EducationMother.
  • LanguageGroup: Bilingual group (French) = Child of Portuguese heritage living in French-speaking Switzerland. Bilingual group (German) = Child of Portuguese heritage living in German-speaking Switzerland. Control group Portuguese = Child living in Portugal.
  • BilingualControl: bilingual = child living in Switzerland; control = child living in Portugal.
  • RegionalLanguage: French = French-speaking Switzerland, German = in German-speaking Switzerland, Portuguese = in Portugal.
  • Time: T1, T2, T3 (first, second, third data collection)
  • Result: Assessment of the child’s narrative skills in Portuguese at a given data collection.

Several of these pieces information are mutually redudant: The information contained in RegionalLanguage can be derived from LanguageGroup as well, for instance. Missing values and null responses were coded as NA.

Your task: Draw a graph with which the following question can be answered: How do the narrative skills in Portuguese of children of Portuguese heritage living in German- and French-speaking Switzerland as well as of children living in Portugal develop from data collection 1 through 3?

This is a pretty difficult assignment, so take your time. Try out a couple of different graphs, and hand in the graph you think works best. Also hand in the compiled HTML report.