ECONOMICS SBA GUIDE

Cover Page
Cover page should be designed simple, clear and clutter free. You must use a letter sized
paper folder. No plastic folders will be accepted.

This page contains:

The title of the SBA,
Your name, candidate #, subject, school, center #, territory and teacher’s name.

Title Page
An investigation into...........................................
or
An examination of..............................................
or
A comparative study of.........................................
or
The economic effects of......................................
or
The impact of..................................................

The title page tells what the focus of the SBA is. It must be clear and brief. The reader
should be able to tell what topic you are focusing on and who you are investigating.

Your teacher will assist in formulating a good title.

Acknowledgement

The acknowledgement is a brief statement of thanks to those who helped you in the
completion of your SBA. Students typically thank God, respondents to the questionnaire,
parents, friends, and teachers.
This acknowledgement does not count toward your word limit.

Introduction

The introduction is a brief description of the issue under investigation, and it allows you to
say why this topic was of interest to you. The introduction doesn’t need to be longer than
half a page.

Table of contents

Here is a sample of how a table of contents should look. Notice, and this is important, that
you don’t write all of the pages that contain a section, you only write the first page. For
example, presentation of data is really pages 5 – 11, but only page 5 is written in the table
of contents. Similarly, analysis is really pages 12 – 14 but only page 12 is written.

Table of Contents

Page

Title 1

Objectives/Purposes 2

Introduction 3

Method of investigation 4

Presentation of data 5

Analysis and Interpretation 12

Findings 15

Recommendations 16

Bibliography 17

Appendix 18

The table of contents does not count toward your word limit.
 OBJECTIVES/PURPOSES

I. To determine ..........................
II. To establish.............................
III. To ascertain whether.................
IV. To discover.............................
V. To find out............................
VI. To observe.............................

You only need about 3 purposes. I listed different synonyms above for you to choose from
to make your writing more interesting. The purposes stem from the main aim. They help
you to find the answer to the main question in the aim.

Your teacher will assist with choosing the purposes.

Method of investigation

For this section, you will have two to three sub-headings:

I. Primary Data
II. Secondary Data
III. Limitations: this is optional

Under primary data, simply state the primary sources that you used to get your
information. You may state them in point form as below:

 Questionnaire: how many you collected, who you distributed them to, any specific
strategy that you used (such as 3 schools, 2 students per form, equal amounts of
male and female). Mention the questionnaires in your analysis.
 Interview: if you interviewed anyone face-to-face, mention here who you interviewed,
their title, and where it took place. Mention the interview in your analysis.
 Observation: if you observed anyone or anything (such as observing prices), state that
here also. Mention your observations in your analysis or introduction.
Under secondary data, state what books, newspaper articles, magazines, or websites you got
information from. Just give the names here, but more details on these go in the
bibliography. You may write it in point form as the example below:

 Textbooks: Economics textbooks were consulted for demand theory. Mention what you
read or provide a quote in your analysis or your introduction.
 Newspapers: the Tobago News and Trinidad Express newspapers were used to obtain
information on prices of bicycles. Mention the newspaper article in your analysis or
introduction.
 Websites: Wikipedia website and the BMX website were visited for uncovering facts
about bicycles. Mention the website in your analysis or introduction.

Under limitations, you may list, in point form, any problems that occurred during the
collection of your data, such as persons ignoring some questions in the questionnaire, or
saying that they don’t understand the questions, or they took long to return the
questionnaires. If you encountered no problems, then you are free to omit the limitations
section.

GUIDELINES FOR DATA COLLECTION

There are two types of data: primary and secondary. You will utilize both types in your
SBA.

Primary data is original data. It is being collected for the first time by the researcher (you).

Sources of primary data: questionnaires, interviews, observation, focus groups etc. You will be
using questionnaires to obtain your primary data.

Secondary data was collected previously by another researcher for a different purpose. But it
is available for you to use in your research. It is second-hand information.

Sources of secondary data: any published information, such as the internet, books, magazines,
newspapers, central bank website, central statistical office website, budget speech by minister
of finance, company websites, and so on.
Choice of questions

The questions that you choose must match your objectives/purposes which were written at
the beginning of the SBA.

Types of questions

There are two types of questions that will be useful in your questionnaire:

i. Closed questions. These questions just require the respondent to tick the appropriate
answer. No further writing is involved.

ii. Open-ended questions. These require the respondent to actually write their response.
Leave a few lines for this.

Most of your questions should be closed, with one or two open-ended ones for extra details.
This would make it easier for you to organize the data into charts, graphs and tables.

Bio Data

You may ask questions such as sex, age, school, form class, village IF you really need it for
your analysis. Do not ask unnecessary things. Do not ask for names because respondents must
be anonymous. These types of questions do not need to be numbered.

Number of questions

10 – 15 questions is sufficient because

 You will have to photocopy many questionnaires (think about your cost),

 You will have to draw a chart, graph or table for every single question,

 People are reluctant to answer long questionnaires because it takes up their time.

Introductory statement

Include a very brief statement explaining who you are (name, school) and why you want
them to respond to your questionnaire (for the completion of your economics SBA). You
may place this at the top of your questionnaire.
Your target

Determine who you want the information from. Who are you going to give your
questionnaire to? (e.g. what school, what age group, village etc)

Strategy for distributing questionnaires

Determine a strategy for collecting the information. You want a fair representation of
persons.

If your target is school children, a good strategy is to choose one boy and one girl from each
form up to 5th form, so you would have each sex represented and each age group
represented, so the information would not be biased.

In general, you should have more than 30 questionnaires, according to the rules of statistics.

Your strategy can also include when and how you will collect the data. Would you collect it
after school? Would you give the questionnaires to a friend to take to their school or
workplace and return to you when they are completed? When you administer a questionnaire
face-to-face, you are assured of getting it back, but when you leave a questionnaire and try
to collect it at a later date, you don’t always get it back, or you may not get it in time to
meet your deadlines. Remember that if you choose to work in a group, you can divide the
task so that each person has fewer questionnaires to distribute.

Presentation of data

Under this section, make a chart, table or graph for each question in your questionnaire. You
can make them easily using Microsoft word or excel (word is easier). Employ variety in your
choices of graphs/tables/charts. Do not include bio data (age, sex, village etc) here unless you
specifically wanted to use it for comparison.

For each chart/graph/table, you must provide heading that says what it is all about.

Example of a bar graph:

Main uses of bicycles between boys and girls

Notice that there was a heading. Notice also that the boys’ and girls’ responses were
separated.

Example of a pie chart:

Notice that the same information is presented here, but all children are counted together.
Boys and girls are not separated. There is a heading, once again. Finally, the chart is of a
different style, a different colour is used, and percentages instead of raw numbers are shown,
so there is variety.

Example of a table:

Main uses of bicycles by children

Uses of bicycles Number of

children
Exercise 15
Recreation 12
Competitions 13
Notice that there is a heading. The table is of a different style and colour than the bar
graph and pie chart above, so there is variety.

Make sure that the diagrams you choose represent the type of data you are
presenting.
 Analysis and Interpretation

“Analysis” and “Interpretation” mean two different things, and you must do both in this
section. This section is worth the most amount of marks and requires the most amount of
writing. Two pages is a fair estimation.

To analyze your data simply means to state in words what you put in your
charts/graphs/tables. Describe the numbers and percentages you got for each question.

To interpret your data means to go beyond just stating what the numbers and percentages
are, to tying them into what you know about economic theory.

Example:

“The data shows that if the price of bicycles falls by 10%, ceteris paribus, 50% more
children would buy bicycles.” That’s the analysis part. You simply gave numbers/percentages.

“This result is consistent with the law of demand which states that there is an inverse
relationship between price and quantity demanded” That’s the interpretation part. You tied
it into what you know about the law of demand.

“A closer look at the data suggests that the rise in the quantity demanded is greater than
the decrease in price, indicating that demand is elastic.” This is interpretation also. It would
earn you more points because you went deeper into the issue by mentioning elasticity.

Findings

Findings refer to what you found out about your objectives/purposes at the end of your
investigation. Therefore, in this section write what you found out about objective/purpose
#1, objective/purpose # 2, objective/purpose #3 etc. You may write them in point form.

Recommendations

Based on what you found out in your SBA, make recommendations on what should happen
next. You should have a minimum of 3 recommendations. Don’t write random
recommendations because they sound good. They must tie into what you found out in your
SBA.
Examples:

 You may recommend that future researchers investigate more thoroughly some aspect
of your SBA.
 You may recommend that the government do something about some aspect of your
SBA.
 You may recommend that businesses do something based on some aspect of your SBA
 You may recommend that consumers do something based on some aspect of your SBA.
Since you are nearing your word limit by this time, keep your recommendations brief, clear,
and sensible.

Bibliography

For your bibliography, you will list details about your sources of data. This means, you
will list the books, websites, magazines, and newspapers that you used to find the
information for your SBA. The sources go in alphabetical order according to the
authors’ last names.

This section may require assistance from your teacher to get it just right.

Example using a book:

Hosein, Dr. R and Stanlake, G.F. 2005. Longman Economics for CXC. Essex: Pearson Education
Limited.

Note what things must be put into it – the authors’ last names and initials of their
other names, the year the book was published, the name of the book, where it was
published, and the name of the publishing company. Write your book references exactly
like mine above. Follow every single detail, such as full stops and commas.

Example using a newspaper/magazine:

Williams, E. (2012). “Expo Attracts Thousands of Children.” Tobago News, October 19.

Note what is needed here – the author’s name, the year of the newspaper, the title
of the article, the newspaper name written in italics, the month and day of the
newspaper. Follow exactly what I wrote above - every full stop, comma, quotation
marks and italics.
 Example using a website:

Franklin, C. (2006, October 9) ‘Companies compete in the basket market’ Forbes Magazine. Retrieved
14 September 2015 from www.forbesmag.com

Example of an interview:

A. Span (Teacher, Bishop’s High School), 2012. Interviewed by author, November 16,
Scarborough, Tobago.

If you interviewed a person face-to-face or by telephone, you must write the person’s
name, title and organization in brackets, and date and place of the interview. Follow
every full stop, comma and bracket above.

Appendix

The appendix must contain a copy of your questionnaire, preferably one that was answered.
Some opt to put in 2 copies – one answered and one blank.

In addition, any other supporting information that is of interest can be placed here, such as
pictures, a photocopy of a newspaper article, and more.

The appendix does not count towards your word limit