Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 23 Issue 3

questions about the four areas of STEM. The post- survey data was compared to the preliminary data to determine if the students’ beliefs remained the same or experienced a change. For this study, the students were asked preliminary questions regarding their feelings and abilities in four areas of STEM: math, science, engineering, and technology. The questions required the students to respond with one of the provided answer choices, strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, coordinate, and strongly agree. Established answer choices allow for easy understanding and better comparison between the students and the post-survey data. In addition, the preliminary survey results were developed into a graph to provide a visual of the data. Figure 2: Preliminary Survey Data A bar graph is determined to suit the data best to show all responses on the same plane. This graph easily distinguishes the frequency of each response to the questions. From this, we can gather some general assumptions regarding 9th-grade female students. For example, the question “Math has been my worst subject” produced a substantial number of “disagree,” while the other responses were somewhat equal. This tells us that most students do not think math is their worst subject. b) Descriptive Statistics Analysis To better understand the results of the survey, it is advisable to make use of descriptive statistics. Measures of central tendency and variability are often used first to analyze data. The main direction is determined by uncovering the mean, median, and mode. Variability considers the responses' dispersion using tools such as range and interquartile range. Due to the nature of the survey, the data would be considered ordinal. The research questions are formatted in a way that generates responses on a scale known as a Likert scale (Sullivan & Artino, 2013). Likert data requires respondents to rank their agreeableness to each statement. Reactions in the data set are among five choices ranging from strongly disagree to agree strongly. The differences between each option are not necessarily equal, which allows us to consider this ordinal data (Sullivan & Artino, 2013). Ordinal data is best analyzed using median, mode, range, and interquartile range. Inputting the survey data into the SPSS software computes this information for further analysis. Each question is labeled as the subject abbreviation followed by the question number (e.g., M1 = “I like math”). The responses are converted into quantitative data for ease of interpretation. Therefore, 1= strongly disagrees, 2= disagree, 3= neither agree nor disagree, 4= agree, and 5= strongly agree. Volume XXIII Issue III Version I 24 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 G © 2023 Global Journals Using Hands-on Experiences including Various Forms of ARTS to Increase Ninth-Grade Female Students’ Interest in STEM – Final Results