Discussion

What do these results mean?

From the data I have been able to gather, there seems to be an association between gender and types of commentary categories mentioned. However, there does not seem to be a clearly defined distinction between the commentary of those of different races and ages. Therefore, my original hypothesis that younger white male tennis players would receive more commentary does not have sufficient evidence to support it. This is also because during my viewing of the matches, the women’s singles’ final match between Rybakina and Jabeur had a great amount of commentary. However the men’s singles’ final match between Djokovic and Kyrgios yielded almost no commentary, let alone commentary that I could use for my data and data analysis. Almost all of the players received an equal amount of commentary. Not only this, but commentary evidence from Rybakina and Jabeur’s match lead to possible rejection of my hypothesis because they received the most commentary out of any other player that I examined within the Wimbledon tournament.

Limitations?

Although my research was kept free from bias as much as was possible, there were some limitations. One of these being that there were not enough people of other races present within the Wimbledon tournament to fully analyze for my research. As seen by the previous chart that shows the number of tennis players who fall within each race, most tennis players are white. There are only a select few that fall under other race categories. Since my project focuses on the idea of comparing people of other races to those of the white race, this was a limitation to my research because there wasn’t a wide range of other-race people that could fall within my random samples. Another limitation was that some of the matches that were randomly selected to be a part of my sample were not published in full. This forced me to analyze incomplete data for the matches. However, since I was already analyzing a large sample size of matches, this was accounted for by the large sample, and the data can still be generalized to the larger population of professional tennis athletes. Additionally, one other limitation that I had with my project was that my project circled around the idea of commentary differences between those of different races and ages. The gap in my research was almost no research done on how age affects differences in commentary. However, even with the research that I conducted, I could not find a clear association between differences in commentary and different ages of tennis players. In addition to this, many of the tennis players that I examined were all around the same age, with exceptions of Djokovic (35) and Raducanu (19). This did not give me sufficient data to support a hypothesis that age is a factor in how different age groups in tennis are commentated on differently. 

Reflection Throughout the Inquiry Process

What was the most important research skill you developed as a result of this process, and how might you apply it to your future endeavors?

Throughout my research journey, I struggled a lot with communicating with peers and teachers in order to aid myself in my research process. However, as time went on, I got more comfortable with communicating my topic and reaching out for help whenever I needed it. So, one of the most important research skills I developed as a result of this research process was communication skills. Even within research, despite the fact that this was an individual project, any research requires some level of collaboration with mentors and peers. Communication skills are necessary for any field of work that one goes into. Within my future endeavors, I expect, and hope, to be able to communicate with my pears, coworkers, teachers, etc. in order to communicate my findings and ideas. 

If you could revisit your research process, what would you do differently and why?

One thing I would do differently would be to look at a wider range of tournaments within tennis. This is because, as previously mentioned, my research questions specifically focused on how race/ethnicity, along with age, play a role in commentary differences between tennis athletes of different genders. However, the problem was that there weren't many other-race people within the Wimbledon tournament to accurately examine. So, obtaining a wider range of samples that contain players from a wide range of tennis tournaments will further allow me to provide an accurate analysis on whether race actually does play a role on commentary differences because there will be more diversity in the new sample that is collected if I were to revisit my research process. 

How did you handle the uncertainty of the research process?

Even though the research process was a little stressful at times, I worked on communicating with my peers in order to alleviate some of that stress. Originally, I was planning on completing a science-based project that would look at and examine the effects of a supplemental antidepressant drug on fruit fly development and birth rates. However, I was falling extremely behind in my research and was unable to follow through with this project. So, I was advised to switch topics completely.

That was when I switched to something that was related to tennis. This is because tennis is a strong passion of mine, as I played for the school for two years and have continued to play with my friends outside of school. I started my inquiries on tennis and found research on differences in commentary for those of different genders within individuals' tennis matches. 

By switching to a topic that better related to me and was more passionate for me, I was able to fully follow through with my research and data collection, and I was able to overcome these specific uncertainties within my research process.