My research and writing has been going okay. I have little difficultly in the research portion, as I can usually find what I am looking for with this topic. I have no issue with the writing when I get down to it, my main issue has been simply motivation. I have been at a loss in regards to feeling motivated enough to push myself to complete tasks related to this project. The whole quarantine thing has really thrown everything out of whack. Not being in a school environment almost makes it feel like we aren’t in school anymore, even though we very much are, and we still have much to do.

I have not been holding well to my schedule at all. I have a hard time timing when I actually will get something started or finished, so I will simply do my best to eventually get everything I listed on the schedule done at some point or another, as long as everything regarding the project is in by the deadline. I should still be able to have everything I planned to do done, just much less spaced out than originally planned. In fact, I actually might end up with more content in some areas than originally planned simply due to more ideas about what I can talk about on the site. I will still be covering most of the topics I planned to cover at minimum, though.

I haven’t really messed around with any of the other tools besides WordPress yet, but I have heard others have had difficulty with Tableau. I know it is optional now, but I might still attempt to work with it and see what happens. I also need to figure out which timeline tool I will prefer using. Once I decide which tool I’d prefer, which won’t take me long, I’m sure I’ll have no problem figuring it out. I typically have little trouble learning to use new programs and technology, and I always know how to look things up in case I do run across a problem that I can’t figure out myself. I’ll also need to play around a little with the other tools on offer to integrate into my site. I will need to likely tone down a lot of my writing’s readability grade, as I have a tendency to go overboard with the vocabulary at time when it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Overall, I feel that I have had the most difficulty with not only my motivation regarding working on this project, but I have also had my other courses take priority at different times, preventing me from doing work on my project when I have needed to focus on those classes entirely. My other classes almost had me in a rush to get everything finished, with final assignments and exams coinciding on occasion. I currently have finished with every course with the exception of this one, so now I have much more time to work on this course. I should be able to meet my deadline with my site, with no problem.

It was not at all hard for me to find data sources related to my subject. Due to disability being something that is now classified under law, and the disabled population being considered its own demographic in many government surveys, there is a decent amount of data to be found on the disabled population in the United States.

I took a look at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to find employment data for those in the U.S. with legally documented disabilities. This set of data was started after June 2008, when the questions related to disability were added to the survey this data set comes from. The survey that provided the data is called the Current Population Survey (CPS). With the data, which is updated monthly, there is included news releases, frequently asked questions, a list of charts that the data has been interpreted into, and a list of articles regarding the way the questions in the survey were developed. The site on which the data set can be found is linked here: https://www.bls.gov/cps/demographics.htm#disability

I also looked at the Bureau of Justice Statistics to find data on violent crimes committed against people with disabilities. This uses the the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) from 2009-2015. The violent crimes recorded are nonfatal violent crimes and only nonfatal violent crimes committed against those with disabilities 12 and older are recorded under the category of violent crimes committed against disabled people. This data also contains the other demographics each victim may have fallen other, crime characteristics, the victim-offender relationship, the time of the crime, whether or not the crime was reported to the police, and how the victim used victim services agencies. The site includes highlights of how the data was interpreted by the Bureau as well. The site on which the data set can be found is linked here: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5986

I think both of these data sources will be equally useful, so I will be find a way to include both of them in my project, in some way or another. I think that I shouldn’t have too much of a problem with the data needed to be cleaned or anything, see as it has been collected and used by the government. So, there should be little cause to have to fiddle with the data at all seeing how it has already been used for such official purposes. I feel that analyzing and visualizing data isn’t very difficult, but can be a fairly tedious task. Even if I don’t use Tableau to interpret the data myself, there are interpretations readily available at least for the Labor Statistics data. As for the Justice Statistics data, I will likely need to do my own interpretation. I will likely need to use Tableau for this, and figure out how to put the data into this program. Hopefully, the data will easily work with this program. If not, I may have to manipulate it to be able to work with such a program in order to make my own interpretation.