Module 3 Part 2 It is important that measurements accurately reflect the event we are measuring, especially if we

It is important that measurements accurately reflect the event we are measuring, especially if we are doing the measurements from a distance. In science, this is often called “ground-truthing.” For this activity, you will ground-truth your earlier analysis by “visiting” the foreign nation you have chosen. To accomplish this without an expensive plane ticket, you can access the local media sources for a specific nation. Even in the most impoverished countries, many newspapers offer very robust online editions. You will find these foreign media sources absolutely fascinating, so as you proceed through this assignment, I encourage you to get side-tracked by the photos, the culture, and the variety of worldviews.

Instructions

Find a news media source for your country. One possibility to try is the source below. If that is not sufficient, you may have to perform additional internetsearches.

List of foreign news media sources:

http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/ (Links to an external site.)

Within the online media for your nation, look for the kind of news that dominates the coverage. Find one article that illustrates the connection between at least two of the variables of poverty, population size, and environmental degradation.

For an example of such an article, refer to the one found in this section (See link at the bottom of this page.) from the online Kenyan newspaper East African Standard. This article describes how precious natural resources are being sold and exported for short-term profits. If Kenya had been your chosen nation, you would know that the incentive for such behavior is linked to poverty, yet you also might consider the ultimate costs of such resource extraction: habitat loss, erosion and degradation of water resources. Wouldn’t this ensure further depletion of resources, resulting in even more poverty?

Maybe, maybe not. If in your investigations you find an article that reveals more variables than the three typical of the PPE phenomena, feel free to use that article and describe those connections instead. For example, in your chosen nation, is the poverty actually caused by ineffective governments? By misguided foreign aid?

Keep in mind that we are trying to answer the question: Does the quantitative data reflect what is actually happening “on the ground”?

To complete this assignment:

Provide a brief 200-300 word synopsis of the article you chose, with citation, and state how you believe this reflects upon the validity of the PPE cycle.

Understand that this is a true critical thinking exercise. You are trying to make sense of a complex issue that lacks absolute answers. This means that the quality of your analysis is more important than your particular stance on the issue. I sincerely look forward to reading your submissions.

Submit your assignment in APA format as a Word document using the assignment link below.

Grading

Your analysis will be graded based on the following criteria:

45 points based on the quality of your summary. What is the article about and who wrote it?

10 points: How does the article relate to population?

10 points: How does it relate to poverty?

10 points: How does it relate to environmental degradation?

15 points: How are the three above factors connected and how does the article reflect on the validity of the PPE cycle? Does it support or refute the PPE cycle?

10 points: Include a reference to the article in the body of the submission and a works cited with the article information as well as any other sources you may use for this assignment.

100 points