By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College
The tragic death of Dolly Parton did not just provide an outburst of sympathy. It also led people to focus on her career in music, in movies, and even reading. How much of an impact? We’ll test that argument on all 159 Georgia counties to gauge the impact.
Our theory is a variation of the Great Man Theory. Calling it the “Great Woman Theory,” it contends that certain people, through their actions, can change the course of history. By focusing so much on literacy, it’s worth exploring how much of an impact she had on young people reading.
To test a hypothesis derived from this theory, we look at Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Local Program Partners in the USA. Of course, anyone can access this online, but not all have a top-notch WiFi system in their area. And some parents may feel more comfortable visiting a library partner in person rather than doing so online. We found our data at the Imagination Library “Find My Program – USA (https://imaginationlibrary.com/usa/find-my-program/).”
From this, our research showed that there were 27 counties in Georgia with such an in-person library local program, or 17 percent of all Georgia colleges. The remaining 132 did not.
We also looked at the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) for data on the percentage of students who are proficient, as well as distinguish, among readers. We found that the average percentage distinguished students in Grade 3 ELA for Georgia counties was 7.92 percent.
To determine what Georgia counties were outliers, we determined that the standard deviation was 5.501 and that any county with Grade 3 ELA readers judged distinguished over 13.42 percent were “above average” outliers. Those counties include Bryan, Cobb, Columbia, Effingham, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Harris, Houston, Jackson, Monroe, Oconee, Schley, and Treutlen.
By the same token, any cases below 2.42 percent were considered one standard deviation below average. Those included Chattooga, Early, Evans, Hancock, Jasper, Mitchell, Quitman, Stewart, Sumter, Talbot, Taliaferro, Telfair, Warren and Wheeler.
In a difference of means test, we found that the average percentage of third grade distinguished readers with a Dolly Parton Imagination Library partner is 8.91%, a full percentage point ahead of the percentage of distinguished third grade readers that don’t have such a library partner (7.72%). Our t-ratio is 1.03, and the p-value just misses statistical significance at the .10 level, though the F-statistic (1.48) is slightly significant (p<.10), indicating that the Dolly Parton Imagination Libraries matter, just not as statistically significant in their boost. This is likely because residents in other counties can either access the program online or drive to a nearby county’s library partner.
The Pearson correlation coefficient (r = 0.08) is also not significant at the .10 level (p>.10), as noted here: https://www.socscistatistics.com/pvalues/pearsondistribution/calculator/. This means we fail to reject the null hypothesis that the variables are unrelated. But the relationship between the percentage of third grade distinguished readers and the poverty rate for the Georgia counties is a strong negative one (r = -0.49, p<0.001), meaning that the more third grade distinguished readers a county has, the lower the county’s poverty rate is likely to be, on average.
John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu or on “X” at @johntures2. His first book “Branded” a thriller novel where corporate greed, media manipulation and academic intrigue collide in a deadly game of product placement, has been published by the Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/product-page/branded). His second novel, “Independent Thought,” about a third-party candidacy that brings America to its knees, is also published by HIP (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/product-page/independent-thought).