So I’m looking at potentially doing a research project analyzing the relationship between (explanatory) school funding, (explanatory) percentage of economically disadvantaged students, and (response) standardized test scores in Massachusetts.
Figuring out how to define those broad categories into specific variables and collecting the data is something I can figure out, but I don’t want to even start doing that unless there is a way to analyze the data.
I’m hypothesizing that funding has a positive association with test scores, that proportion of disadvantaged students has a negative association with test scores, but also that proportion of disadvantaged students has a positive correlation with funding (because of state aid formulas), which muddies all the associations. Is there any way I can go about falsifying or proving this?