5. Conclusions and Evaluations

5. Good news... you are nearly there :)

The remaining two sections should be relatively short and straight forward... especially if you have done a decent job on the Data Description and Interpretation.

Conclusion

• Refer back to your title/question.

• State whether (or not) tourists have a significant effect on the Honeypot Site/s of Windsor.

• Explain to what extent they impact related to the hypotheses you have listed in the intro... ie these are likely to be linked to economic impact or environment.

• In discussing this last point, refer to specific data/evidence that you have presented/interpreted to support your views.

• If you have found that there are clear correlations/links between sets of data, these should also be highlighted and discussed. For example, you may have found that international tourists stay for longer and,on average, spend more while at Windsor. However, day trippers might be more numerous overall and, because they come from nearby, might constitute a group that is likely to pay return visits. They are more likely to do this if they have high visitor satisfaction from their visit... thus it might be suggested that the quality of the environment, activities and services available is kept high by local business and Local Authority to ensure return visits and more income in the future... ie lower spending day trippers have a bigger impact on the site because they "incentivise" high standards of maintenance and service in Windsor... keeping it nicer for everyone.

Evaluation

From the examiners point of view... and thus what you need to demonstrate is that...

...candidates understand the links between the methods employed, the quality of the data collected and the validity of the conclusions that are drawn.

This means you need to show, with reference to actual work you have carried out, that you can see how the accuracy of your conclusions depends on obtaining accurate.valid data. This can only be achieved if the methods you have used to gather the data are appropriately accurate, objective (unbiased) and representative.

To demonstrate this understanding:

1. Identify one or two problems that you have recognised in your data collection methodology. For example, it may be that you have realised that you collected all your surveys from the crowd waiting for the changing of the guard. As a result you have only got international visitors (because they hang out in coach groups). Alternatively, your environmental scores might have been collected by different people... because they are inherently subjective - and two people will make different judgements - they are not really comparable from one transect to another i.e. your subjective view point will almost certainly differ from someone else's subjective view point... what you consider to be a crowded, noisy place might be regarded as only moderately crowded and noisy.

2. Discuss the problem you have identified and how it may have affected the results you have collected. Also, suggest a solution to the problem. For example, with respect to the questionnaire issue above... collecting responses from people on one coach tour would lead to most of your questionnaires being completed by international visitors. This would disproportionately reflect the views of foreign nationals which might be more or less favourable than UK nationals... your data i.e. the responses, would, therefore, be unrepresentative of the actual population of people visiting Windsor which is likely to include a proportion of day trippers who are clearly going to be from the UK. A solution to this problem would be to ensure that questionnaires were collected from a variety of locations around Windsor...

3. Having identified the problem/s, you need to suggest how it might have impacted your conclusions... so, if your questionnaire responses included, for example, high expected spending figures, this might be because international visitors are making the "trip of a lifetime" and are thus prepared to spend more on this special experience.