========================================================================== Team member names: Christopher Lee ckl2@andrew.cmu.edu Sonam Rajpal srajpal@andrew.cmu.edu Swetha Reddy swethar@andrew.cmu.edu Siddhartha Gupta sgupta1@andrew.cmu.edu Jung Yub Lee jungyubl@andrew.cmu.edu ========================================================================== For Team Assignment I.2, please * Turn in a complete, revised draft of your Team Assignment I.1, covering all the points [(a) through (e) for project 1, and (a) through (f) for project 2] below. Please label these points in your revised draft, so they are easy (for me!) to find and read. * The revised draft should include very carefully thought out information about Target Population (item b below), Sampling Frame (item c below) and Method of Data Collection (item d below). * Also make any additional revisions required or suggested in my comments below. Please revise ALL PARTS of the proposal for next Tuesday. Even if I have not commented much on one or more points, all aspects of the proposal can be improved. * Assignment I.2 will be graded using the same scheme below, but with higher standards throughout. ========================================================================== Project Proposal 1: How Carnegie Mellon University undergraduates perceive Greek Life on campus? OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * Great that you've thought of student life as a potential client. Has anyone in your group approached student life yet? It would be interesting to see what student life would be interested in learning from your survey. * Right now this is a "do you like it" survey. That tends to lead to an uninteresting result (everybody likes it) or bad feelings (people don't like it). Some "do you like it" questions are OK, but you need to add in other variables or questions you can ask that would lead to actions that someone (student life?) could take if they knew your results. (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? "This topic is interesting because we will be able to measure and evaluate the opinion of two distinct groups (those who are Greek, and those who are not Greek). ... A potential client is the Carnegie Mellon University Student Life Office. The Greek system at Carnegie Mellon falls under the jurisdiction of the Student Life Office, and any information/opinions from the student body will help them create a campus environment that satisfies the mission and vision of Carnegie Mellon University." * asking both greek and non-greek students is a good idea * do not just ask "do you like it" or "what image does it have" questions. For one thing, you can predict that greek students will be positive, and non-greeks soso or negative. Instead, be sure to ask questions on topics or issues that student life could, or would, potentially do something about. Otherwise, why bother with this survey? * you have what look like statements based on research about your project, but you cite no sources/references. Please provide one citation, and at least one sentence on that citation, for every member of your group (relevant to the research you report here!). * pls answer carefully for I.2 (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? * since you answered ABC from the short form you haven't answered this yet. that's ok, but now you must. * What students are you interested in? All CMU undergrads (even those in kuwait?) Any grads? Only those that live in greek houses or university-sponsored housing? Any "commuters"? etc. * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? * since you answered ABC from the short form you haven't answered this yet. that's ok, but now you must. * the usual way to think about this is, how can you get a list of students to select a sample from? Or will you contact students in some other way, like standing at a certain place on campus and approaching passersby? What places would you stand? For how long? What are pro's and con's of this, vs. a list, vs. ... ? * pls answer carefully for I.2: SAMPLING FRAME (d) How do you plan to carry out the survey & why? * pls answer carefully for I.2 MODE OF DATA COLLECTION * once you have contacted the students, how will they respond? surveymonkey? email answers back to you? meet them for face to face interviews? etc. * whatever the method, nonresponse will be a big issue. - Face to face interviews make for great response rates but would be at least very time consuming to carry out. - if you could get a student phone book from each campus, you could conduct a phone survey. this might be effective at getting better response rates but not use up a ton of your time. - if you could get a list of email addresses for each campus, you could conduct an email or email-and-web survey. - for email/web surveys nonresponse will be a bigger issue. - for email and web surveys, get only about 25% or less response rate. - how can you improve this with followup and/or prenotification (e.g. postcards)? how many times, and how, will you followup? - who responds, who doesn't? how would this affect biases in your results? - if you are stuck with low response rate, what would you need to know or be able to do, to argue either 1. the sample you got is still like a representative probability sample; or 2. you know what adjustments to make so that the sample can be treated as a representative probability sample (e) What variables will you measure? The main question we want to answer through this sample survey is, “How is Greek Life perceived in the eyes of undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon University?” Through the media, movies and television, Greek Life is often displayed in the negative light. We feel as though many students at Carnegie Mellon develop opinions about Greek Life through these mediums without any evidence or information. To answer the main question, we want answer the question, “Does Greek Life offer students opportunity for leadership, service, and development/growth?” We also want to answer the question, “Does Greek Life at Carnegie Mellon today establishes the ideals in which Greek Letter societies were originally founded upon (leadership, scholarship, community service and friendship)?” Answering these questions will enable our team to really understand how the general undergraduate population views the Greek system, and see how it is perceived on campus. * This is a good initial effort but much revising will be needed: - Important to develop specific variables that help to answer the first and second questions, "How is Greek Life perceived in the eyes of undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon University?", "Does Greek Life offer students opportunity for leadership, service, and development/growth?" See also my next point. - The third question, "Does Greek Life at Carnegie Mellon today establishes the ideals in which Greek Letter societies were originally founded upon (leadership, scholarship, community service and friendship)?", both requires knowledge of the greek system that not all respondents will have, and seems to implicitly push a point of view on the respondent. Can you break this down into a set of more specific questions that (a) have more objective rather than subjective answers; and (b) measure how much visible each of the four ideals is to the respondent. - Please add variables/questions that lead to actions that student life could take if they knew the results of the survey (whether that might involve publicizing some aspects of the greek system better, getting the greek houses to change the way they do certain things, advocate for more [or less] space for greek residences near campus, etc. etc.). * pls answer carefully for I.2 ========================================================================== Project Proposal 2: how do undergraduates at the University of Pittsburgh perceive Carnegie Mellon University undergraduate students. OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * Again good that you've thought of a client here, but I am not sure how this is relevant to admissions at the two universities. How would recriuting address any problems you uncover with the survey? Would the admissions offices be willing to undertake these kinds of actions? * This is another "do you like it" survey. I am not at all sure how to turn this one into something that someone could act on! * If you cannot turn it into this kind of question (something that's interesting enough that someone might be interested in acting upon) then I will want you to choose a different topic for your second (off campus) proposal--choose a topic that is interesting and that someone could act on the results of. (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? * Again, it looks like you did some background research on the topic, but you don't cite your sources. Please provide one citation, and at least one sentence on that citation, for every member of your group. * pls answer carefully for I.2 (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? * Please specify carefully what population you want to study. your main question refers to pitt undergraduates. are you interested in all undergrads at every pitt campus? those in oakland only? full time only or part time students too? etc. * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? * the usual way to think about this is, how can you get a list of students to select a sample from? Or will you contact students in some other way, like standing at a certain place on campus and approaching passersby? What places would you stand? For how long? What are pro's and con's of this, vs. a list, vs. ... ? * pls answer carefully for I.2: SAMPLING FRAME (d) How do you plan to carry out the survey & why? * whatever the method, nonresponse will be a big issue. - Face to face interviews make for great response rates but would be at least very time consuming to carry out. - if you could get a student phone book from each campus, you could conduct a phone survey. this might be effective at getting better response rates but not use up a ton of your time. - if you could get a list of email addresses for each campus, you could conduct an email or email-and-web survey. - for email/web surveys nonresponse will be a bigger issue. - for email and web surveys, get only about 25% or less response rate. - how can you improve this with followup and/or prenotification (e.g. postcards)? how many times, and how, will you followup? - who responds, who doesn't? how would this affect biases in your results? - if you are stuck with low response rate, what would you need to know or be able to do, to argue either 1. the sample you got is still like a representative probability sample; or 2. you know what adjustments to make so that the sample can be treated as a representative probability sample * pls answer carefully for I.2: MODE OF DATA COLLECTION (e) What variables will you measure? "The over arching question we want to study is “How are Carnegie Mellon University undergraduates perceived in the eyes of University of Pittsburgh undergraduate students?” We plan to answer the overall question by asking more specific questions about how University of Pittsburgh undergraduates view Carnegie Mellon undergraduates regarding academics, social scene, general attitude, campus involvement, diversity and school spirit." * this is a good start. please make a more specific list of variables as you revise this proposal. remember to list variables that address issues that someone could possibly do something about. * pls answer carefully for I.2 (f) Sample questions for off-campus project? * pls answer carefully for I.2 ================================================================== Total grade: Project Proposal 1: (out of 48; 8 pts/part) Project Proposal 2: (out of 56; 8 pts/part) ----------------------- Total 104 NOTES: On I.1, everyone gets 100 points, regardless of the comments I made above. On I.2, I will grade each part about out of 8 pts/part. This come out to a bit more than 100 pts, which will just be extra credit for a team that really nails I.2. Each person on the team gets the team score recorded in the gradebook. If your team gets 84 pts on I.2, then each team member gets 84 pts in the gradebook. ==================================================================