========================================================================== Team member names: MCGRATH, BENJAMIN D Fresh HSS ECO L 9.0 bmcgrath@andrew.cmu.edu BURGESS, JOSEPH M. Soph HSS HSS L 9.0 jmburges@andrew.cmu.edu LEE, JOHN Senior HSS ECO L 9.0 johnl1@andrew.cmu.edu LECOMPTE, ALEXANDRA VICTO Soph HSS ECO L 9.0 avlecomp@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. ========================================================================== OVERALL COMMENTS ON BOTH PROJECT PROPOSALS: This pair of proposals was among the least thoughtful proposals I received. You have a great deal of work and thinking ahead of you, to get a passing grade on I.2. You cannot proceed to the next project stage until you have an acceptable I.2. So you also run the risk of falling behind on your project and not being able to pass the class. Please take very seriously the matters of * proposing interesting surveys whose results someone might possibly be able to do something about * providing thoughtful and complete answers to each of the parts below for your revised project proposals for I.2. ========================================================================== Project Proposal 1: How well do Carnegie Mellon University Freshmen utilize their meal blocks? OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * I found both of these topics to be somewhat boring. The first topic (meal blocks) is somewhat better than the second (living with college students). (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? * Can the dining services already find this out by the purchase records they keep? - What kind of information could you add to what dining services already gets? - Part of the reason this is not very interesting is that I don't see what anyone could do about the results of this survey -- waht actions could take place based on it? * If you cannot come up with convincing reason(s) to go through the trouble of doing this survey, you will have to find a different topic. * Since you did a-e&f from the longer project outline, you haven't cited any research/results on this project. That's OK. But please provide one citation, and at least one sentence on that citation, for every member of your group, for the revised draft. * pls answer carefully for I.2 (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? "All CMU Freshmen with a meal plan" * are there CMU freshmen without a meal plan? * what about freshmen at other campuses (e.g. Kuwait?). * please specify more carefully the population you meanr. * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? "Freshmen in Mudge, McGill and Boss House" * this is a well-defined frame. But it is likely to be biased, not representative of "all" CMU freshmen. If you keep this frame, explain why it is likely to be biased, and explain how that might be corrected. * you may wish to change your sampling frame to something more representative of freshmen on this campus generally. For example, the sampling frame is often either a list of students that you can take a random sample from, or a set of students that are well defined by actions you take (e.g. all students that pass by the fence between times X and Y on days A, B and C -- not necessarily a great frame [undercoverage?] but an example of a frame that is not a list). In the latter case you would still have to choose times, days and locations that help make the sample representative of the whole target population * if you do change the frame, you might want to carry out your original idea (handing out paper surveys to students in Mudge, McGill and Boss House), and compare the results with results from the "better frame", to see if there are in fact any differences! [this is optional--you do not have to do it--but it is an interesting idea] * pls answer carefully for I.2: SAMPLING FRAME (d) How do you plan to carry out the survey & why? "Using a written questionnaire handed out to Freshmen living in Mudge, McGill and Boss house" * see comments above. I would expect just "handing out" paper questionnaires with no followup to have a fairly poor response rate. * 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? "Numbers left over on average, Amount left over last semester, How much dinex is given to other people, How much dinex is used per week, Satisfaction with current meal plan" * isn't all of this information available already to dining services? * what can you add to it, that would give dining services a better idea how to serve freshmen? * pls answer carefully for I.2 ========================================================================== Project Proposal 2: Attitudes of non-college denizens toward living in an apartment building with college students OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * I found both of these topics to be somewhat boring. The first topic (meal blocks) is somewhat better than the second (living with college students). * This is basically a "do you like" survey. "do you like" surveys either have boring answers (respondents are indifferent, or don't mind living with college students) or cause bad feelings (respondents don't like living with college students, but the survey results don't suggest any realistic changes that one can implement to improves the situation). (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? * Since you answered a-e & f from the longer project outline, you haven't yet providee any previous research/results on this project. Please provide one citation, and at least one sentence on that citation, for *every* member of your group, in the next draft. * pls answer carefully for I.2 ==== For (b)-(e) below, you've given essentially the same answers, with the same problems, as for your first survey proposal. So I'm not going to repeat my comments; just read them above and address them here as well. Note that your target population is particularly narrow and uninteresting -- essentially identical to your rather small sampling frame. The survey questions [part (f)] you wrote don't add anything new to comment on. === (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? * 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 (e) What variables will you measure? * 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. ==================================================================