========================================================================== Team member names: Jose Alfredo Galvan jagalvan@andrew.cmu.edu Nektarios Leontiadis leontiadis@cmu.edu Mohammad Baradaran Shoraka mbaradar@andrew.cmu.edu Chia-Hsuan Yang chiahsuy@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: The attributes of innovation in order to meet the challenges of global knowledge economy OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * your proposal is quite a bit too long. Good that you did the extra work, but there is virtue (and, often, clarity) in succinctness. Save this draft, but please respect the 3-page limit in the next draft. * Different parts of the proposal seem to be aiming at different (sometimes vastly different) versions of the research question. Choose one self-contained, well-defined version of the research question. Stick to it. Develop target population, sampling frame, method of data collection, and variables, that focus on that question, rather than trying to pull in everything including the kitchen sink into the proposal. (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? * this is potentially an interesting question * plenty of research on the topic * pls answer carefully for I.2 (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? * you've pitched it as an on-campus survey of students & teachers, but I think that is the wrong population. Isn't it really about the (off campus) population of employers? How would students on-campus know which innovation skills they will need after they graduate, e.g.? [convince me that you're right (e.g. that the survey is actually about the opinions of faculty and students (rather than employers), or change the target population (or research question!)] in your proposal you identify three different components of the target population: undergrads, grad students and faculty. Would you ask the same questions of each? Or different questions of each of the three groups? * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? * Not yet clear to me how you'll identify a sampling frame (list of possible respondents) so you can draw a random sample. You will probably need different frames for faculty and students, and maybe different frames for graduate and undergraduate students. * pls answer carefully for I.2: SAMPLING FRAME (d) How do you plan to carry out the survey & why? * It's not clear to me why you are interviewing some respondents, sending others to the web, etc. If you are going to do full surveys of each group (faculty, grad and undergrad students) it is probably too elaborate to get through in one semester. Are you planning to do a full survey of one group only, and then use interviews with a few mrmber of the other group? * 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 3M table is helpful. But this changes the nature of the question doesn't it? Are you now asking, essentially, who on campus is familiar with the ideas in the 3M table? * pls answer carefully for I.2 ========================================================================== Project Proposal 2: Graphical versus Numerical Presentation of Quantitative Environmental Risk Information about Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * your proposal is quite a bit too long. Good that you did the extra work, but there is virtue (and, often, clarity) in succinctness. Save this draft, but please respect the 3-page limit in the next draft. (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? * Seems like an interesting, actionable question within the research community. Nice to have research hypotheses that might be testable by survey. * seems like something you could do as an on-campus survey or as a survey with a larger off-campus population * prev research cited, etc. fine. * pls answer carefully for I.2 (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? * I cannot tell what target population the "general public" refers to * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? "we plan to recruit 240 participants from community groups, who have been shown to vary widely in their numeracy scores" * this is a sample of convenience, rather than a represetnative probability sample, or one that approximates that. To what target population do you hope to generalize? What quality control measures will you have in place so that we can hope your results do generalize to that target population? Etc. * pls answer carefully for I.2: SAMPLING FRAME (d) How do you plan to carry out the survey & why? * I believe you are planning for a paper and pencil or web-based self-report form. you haven't decided which yet. Would you expect an effect for mode of presentation (p&p/interview vs web form)? How do you think this decision affect your results? * your two-by-two design will require adequate sample size in each cell. * pls answer carefully for I.2: MODE OF DATA COLLECTION (e) What variables will you measure? * list of variables in 'methods' section is a good start. Are there demographic or other background variables that would be relevant? * pls answer carefully for I.2 (f) Sample questions for off-campus project? * I didn't see any sample questions. * 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. ==================================================================