18 Oct Collecting, organizing, and analyzing data using statistical methods

Purpose:              The Structured External Assignment promotes understanding of the course material.    Collecting, organizing, and analyzing data using statistical methods is the cornerstone of                      this course.

 

Process:               There are four milestones for this project: topic selection, proposal, data collection, and               final draft. The rough draft and the final draft are polished, written reports in APA format. Since     each milestone is used to complete remaining milestones, each milestone must be completed prior to completing the next milestone.

 

1.            Topic selection

 

Each student will select a unique question that they would like to answer. Each question will be answered by collecting, organizingand analyzing data using methods learned in this class. Specifically, each student is required to analyze data using a hypothesis test. Each student must have a unique topic. Students who are repeating the course must select a new topic. The following list is meant to stimulate ideas: these topics may not be used by students.

 

Sample ideas:

 

•             Are gender and political party related?  (Test of Association hypothesis test)

 

•             Does the number of customers waiting in line vary each day of the week?  (Goodness of Fit hypothesis test)

 

•             Does a specific method of learning improve grades?  (Two sample hypothesis test for means)

 

•             Does summer training reduce the rate of fall sports injuries? (Two sample hypothesis test for proportions)

 

2.            Project proposal

 

Each student will post a project proposal to Canvas as a word document. In your proposal, answer thefollowing questions:

 

•             What is your research question? What is your population and your variables? Why are you interested in this question?

 

•             How will you collect your data?  State your method of sampling using terms discussed in class.

 

•             What bias or confounding variables might limit your study?

 

•             How will you display your data?  State the type of graph you will use.

 

•             What type of analysis will you perform? Examples:

 

o             Are you determining if two variables are related? (Test of Association hypothesis test)

 

o             Are you comparing counts for different categories? (Goodness of Fit hypothesis test)

 

o             Are you comparing the means of two sets of data?  (Two sample hypothesis test for means)

 

o             Are you comparing proportions for two sets of data? (Two sample hypothesis test for proportions)

 

3.            Data collection

 

Each student will post an Excel spreadsheet to Canvas that provides original data organized in a chart, and displays data in a graph.  Guidelines for data collection:

 

•             Data must be publicly available, or, you must have permission in writing to share that data publicly.

 

•             Projects are not going to be submitted to the IRB for approval, thus must focus on publically available data or surveys.

 

•             Sources must be properly cited.

 

•             Do not simply use statistics provided in a published study.

 

•             No experiments on humans or animals are permitted.

 

4.            Final draft

 

Each student will submit a word document to Canvas, where it will be checked by Turnitin for plagiarism. Final drafts must include the sections indicated in the rubric.