*TEAM PROJECT ASSIGNMENT (in 6 Parts):  /DESIGNING A SAMPLE SURVEY/*

 
Form a team of 4 (or possibly 5) students by noon, Friday January 17 and
send names to Professor Fienberg.  All other students will be assigned
to teams at that time.
Schedule a team meeting for the weekend of January 18-19 at which you
need to identify *two* survey projects that your team could actually
implement over the course of the semester. Examples include:

    * A survey of undergraduate students regarding hours for the libraries;
    * A survey of academic departments to learn about their uses of
      information technology;
    * Faculty Course Evaluations and other means of evaluating faculty
      teaching;
    * A survey of the CMU community to learn about smoking habits and
      attitudes toward smoking.
    * A survey of the subscribers to a local newspaper.

Do Parts I and II for BOTH of the topics that you select.  By the end of
January you will need to settle on  a topic for  your team project.  If
your survey has a client, this may lead to a different schedule  of work.
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Part I (due January 21)*

    A.    Why is this topic interesting? Is there a client for whom you
    might do the survey?
    B.    What question(s) do you propose to study? Give a brief answer
    that would have been understandable by a non-statistician.
    C.    What research has already been done on the topic or on the
    theoretical construct of central importance to your topic? What
    could be learned from survey results? Each group member should
    locate and review 1 relevant piece of research (e.g., article,
    report, book, etc.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Part II (due January 28)*
 

    D.    What population or populations do you plan to sample? (This is
    the question many tend to miss).
    E.    To what population(s) do you wish to make inferences?

        How does it differ from the sampled population in D?
        What possible sampling and non-sampling errors could arise in
        the survey that you plan to conduct?
        Explain each possible error, how it could occur, and how you
        suggest tackling it.

    F.    How do you plan to carry out the survey (e.g., by telephone,
    e-mail) and why?
    G.    What variables do you propose to measure?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Part III (due February 4)*

    H.     On the basis of feedback to your submission for Parts I and
    II, choose a final survey topic, and update or revise your answers
    to (A) through (G) above.
    I.     Fill out the IRB form (available on the course webpage).
    J.    How do you plan to protect the privacy and assure the
    confidentiality of respondents? Talk about data collection,
    protection, and disclosure.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Part IV (due February 18)*
 

    K.    Decide on a sampling scheme (e.g., SRS, Stratified random
    sample, etc.) and explain why you chose it.
    L.    Write a questionnaire with 20-30 questions.
    M.    Give some idea of the sample size you will require and how you
    arrived at this number (talk about the margin of error for
    inferences you want to make).

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Part V (due March 3)*

    N.    Pretest of a revised version of your questionnaire on a group
    of possible     respondents
    O.    Report on the specification of and results from the pretest,
    and the possible redesign of  the questionnaire that may be required.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Part VI (due March 18)*

    P.    Submit a final revised version of  (I) through (M) to go to
    the University IRB.
    Q.   Develop and report on your schedule for implementing the
    survey, including plans for nonresponse followup, data analysis, and
    preparation of a final report.


*Once this final version of the survey plan is approved you will be able
to begin implementation.***

------------------------------------------------------------------------