Week 10 Blog- Improving My Final Product

This week’s work consisted of lots of tweaking to the first draft of my final product from last week. I realized I hadn’t updated certain sections of my methodology to be more detailed, so I wrote a step-by-step explanation of my process, since my previous instructions were quite vague. Since I went through a lot of changes from my original plans, I was able to talk about what modifications I made and why as well. I also edited my literature review to include more context on the 2025 government shutdown, in particular, and more information about how my approach is distinct from the existing literature.

Additionally, I dedicated a lot of time to improving my analysis section. I realized I had previously made a lot of statements that established a cause-and-effect relationship between certain variables. However, since my regressions do not include an experiment, I cannot make such claims. Thus, I fixed my wording to highlight the correlative relationship of my factors so readers do not get confused about what I may be trying to insinuate. For my conclusion, I was able to add more events that I was not aware could act as confounding variables before, such as the trade negotiations between the U.S. and China that also occurred in October of 2025.

As for my introduction, I addressed possible biases due to my background by explaining how I would be open-minded to whatever results my project produced. The research is useful regardless of what the outcome is, so I made sure to keep my language very neutral about what I expect the effects of the shutdown to be.