========================================================================== Team member names: Andrew Leroux aleroux@andrew.cmu.edu Nelson Mangaali nwm@andrew.cmu.edu Tokiea Fitzgerald tfitzger@andrew.cmu.edu Ben Klahr bklahr@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 PROPOSALS: These are two of the weakest proposals I received. It doesn't look as though your group spent much time on either one; instead perhaps you just wrote down the first thing that came into your heads. I don't see that you can get information on your research question for Proposal 1 from a campus survey. Perhaps the best thing to do is to start over with a brand-new question, answering fully and carefully each of (a)-(e) below. The new question can be about marijuana, or something completely different, if you want--just not something that another group has proposed. the most interesting questions are those that * someone might possibly do something about if they know the results of your survey * can be done as a survey of undergraduates on our campus, or a similar well-defined population. Your second proposal is somewhat better, in that I can at least see ways to modify it into something that might be of interest. But not much thought has gone into that question either, and so I'm concerned whether you would stay interested enough in this to do a good job over the course of the semester. Please carefully answer (a)-(e) and (f) below, for a version of this question that you can convince me you really care about. Or, you may think up a new question--avoid anything that another group has proposed--and answer (a)-(e) and (f) below very carefully for that. Remember, this is supposed to be an off-campus survey, so a topic that naturally has an off-campus target population woud be best. You have much to do, to get a passing grade on I.2. And you cannot go on to the next part of the project until you have acceptable project proposals for I.2. So if you do not get a passing grade on I.2 I will ask you to revise again, and you run the risk of falling behind on your project this semester. ========================================================================== Project Proposal 1: Does using marijuana prevent an individual from doing well in life? OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * Since this is proposal 1 I assume it is meant to be done on-campus. But I don't see how a survey of CMU students can answer the question. * This proposal as it stands is inadequate. The research question is not coherent and there is little possibility to get useful information about it from a survey. (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? "With the growing debate of legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, we find ourselves interested in the validity of claims made by the department of education and various other organizations are true. Claims including, but not limited to, a decrease in motivation, learning capity and overall intelligence and so forth, that seem to have little in the way of exhaustive studies to support such claims." * Legalizing marijuana for medical uses is quite different from legalizing for general recreational use; it is not clear that the claims reated to decrease in motivation, etc., are even relevant if marijuana is legaized as a palliative for some medical condition(s). * The effects you mention--a decrease in motivation, learning capscity and overall intelligence and so forth--are also temporary effects of excessive alcohol use, yet moderate alcohol use is not considered to prevent people from being successful in life. So I do not see how these are connected to your main question. * I do not see that surveying CMU students (or a general population beyond CMU, for that matter) could provide very clear answers on a question like "doing well in life". * You did ABC from the short project outline but you did not provide 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. * pls answer carefully for I.2 (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? I gather you are thinking of "CMU students" as the target population. If so, specify more fully who you mean. undergraduates only? students who attend classes on the main pittsburgh campus only? etc. * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? * Usually, the sampling frame should either be 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). * 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? * your answer to "B" on the short project outline is: "The main question we are proposing to study is the question under "Topic." A brief answer could take the form "While it has been well established that the use of marijuana causes short term memory loss, the percentage of students who admit to using marijuana is not significantly different from the overall population. This implies that there may be other underlying factors that contribute to marijuana users being less successful in school apart from marijuana use, and that perhaps may not sufficiently explain the relative scholastic success of these individuals." However, this (a) doesn't list any variables that you would want to answer or questions you would want to ask; and (b) gives a sample conclusion from the study that is almost meaningless with respect to the research question you have posed. * pls answer carefully for I.2 ========================================================================== Project Proposal 2: "Do You Believe In The Influence Of Intangible Forces?" OVERALL: * EVERYONE can do a better job of convincing me why each of their projects is interesting enough to actually bother to do. * Since this is proposal 2 I assume it is meant to be done off-campus. However I don't see anything about the survey or its topic that would require you to go off campus. I also do not see what off-campus target population you might be interested in. * This proposal is closer to adequate than the marijuana proposal, but there is still much work to do, to get a passing grade on either proposal. Sharpen your research question a lot here. There is little one can do or say about the result of a survey like "Do You Believe In The Influence Of Intangible Forces?" It's hard to get excited about either answer (yes or no) because there is no context. Perhaps if the survey also included questions about religious affiliation (so we could see consistency or inconsistency between belief and affiliation, for example), that might be more interesting. There are other possibilities as well. But are you interested enough to do this? it doesn't seem you put much effort into either of these proposals!! (a) Interesting research question? Doable? Each team member provides one piece of previous research or results on this question? "It's always interesting to discover how much control people feel they really have over their own lives, and how much influence they feel fate, destiny, God etc. have on their day-to-day existences. This probably wouldn't be conducted for any sort of dire reason -- it's more for the simple interest in humanity, to figure out why people do what they do, and how much they hold themselves accountable." * why is this interesting? what will anyone learn that is sufficiently exciting to keep you involved in this for the rest of the semester? perhaps a convincing argument can be made, but you haven't made it yet. "As mentioned in an earlier email, there were no relevant legitimate studies that we were able to find, although it seems as though it must exist somewhere!" * You must provide one citation, and at least one sentence on that citation, for *every* member of your group, in the revised proposal. * pls answer carefully for I.2 (b) What population do you want to make inferences about? * you haven't given any hints at all about what your target population will be * pls answer carefully for I.2: TARGET POPULATION (c) What population will you sample? Is this different from (b)? * Usually, the sampling frame should either be 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). * 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? you have listed some questions, but what are you really interested in here? Anything? * pls answer carefully for I.2 (f) Sample questions for off-campus project? * your questions "Do you believe in fate?" "Do you believe in the influence of intangible forces that cannot be explained by science?" (this one will need to be made RELATEABLE!! "Do you believe in God or any sort of diety?" "To what degree do these unseen forces affect your life?" "How would you characterize this influence: good, neutral, or bad?" are both redundant and not very broad. what are you actually interested in here? * 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. ==================================================================