Math 1150 - Elementary Statistics

Group Project 1 Research Proposal 100pts

Design a Statistical Study to investigate something your group would like to know. Groups have been created based on similar majors so it is likely that you can find a topic by which everyone is at least remotely intrigued.

Think about this assignment like a grant application. Use your power of storytelling to convince someone to give you money to conduct your study. You will certainly need to make them care, though your punchline, which are the implications for practice. These implications for practice will only be speculative at this point but these possible implications give the people with the money a reason to give it to you.

Here are some notes for this assignment specifically: I am not expecting you to do background research for this project (unless you really want to) so choose a topic that you are interested in and feel pretty knowledgeable about. However, if you do consult any sources, save and document them because you may want to use that information to support your findings in Group Projects 2 & 3 and you will need to provide a citation at that time.

Answer the following questions that have been grouped by section. For this assignment, short answers are fine. Eventually these will become complete sentences and paragraphs for Projects 2 & 3.

This document has been shared with your entire group on the Google Drive. Please provide your group's responses directly in this document.

Purpose (20 pts) The answers to these questions will eventually become part of the purpose section for Projects 2&3. This section lets your reader know why you did what you did.

Topic What are you planning to investigate?

Research Question(s) - What do you want to know? (It is alright to have more than one research question)

Hypothesis - What do you think the results of the study will be?

Rationale for this hypothesis - Why did you think that?

Introduction (20 pts) The answers to these questions will eventually become the introduction paragraph for Projects 2&3.

1. What is known? (What do you already know about this topic?) 1 sentence

1. What is unknown? (What do you not know but would like to?) 1 sentence

1. What is the critical need? (Who cares? Why do you want to know that?) 1 sentence

1. What are you going to do about it? (Briefly state (1 sentence) what you are going to do to discover this information. Ex: Distribute a survey that askes )

Methods Section (20 pts) - The answers to these questions will eventually become the methods section for Projects 2&3. The Methods section lets your reader know how you did what you did.

1. Participants - Who/what is the population (all the individuals or objects) of interest? Describe them.

1. Design While a census is always an option for data collection, in reality it is usually more costly and time consuming than is feasible because you are collecting data from EVERY member of your population, so a sample is used instead. Given our limited resources in this class, you will be using a sample, likely a convenience sample. Describe your sampling method and procedure or explain why a census is needed or reasonable.

1. Procedure - Describe your data collection plan:

   1. Develop a Google Forms survey according to the survey requirements below and paste the sharable link here.

1. 1. Specify the variables. What exactly are you trying to measure with this survey?

1. 1. How will it be distributed? (Electronically, paper, you interview people)

1. 1. Will there be any incentive offered to complete your survey? If so, what?

1. 1. Address any issues of ethics, subject confidentiality, and privacy.

1. 1. Describe any permissions you might need to obtain to collect this data and from whom would you need to obtain that permission.

Possible Implications for Practice (20 pts) Describe what you think will be the benefits of conducting this study. How can this information be used to make a difference in your field or society?

Survey Requirements (20 pts): These are the minimum requirements for your survey in order to ensure that you will have enough of the right kind of data to complete Group Projects 2&3. You are certainly welcome to collect additional data by adding additional questions to your survey, perhaps in support of additional research questions. Your survey must contain questions that will collect the following types of data:

• At least 1 series of categorical data (qualitative data) that has at least 2 responses (i.e. gender, yes/no, east/west, offence/defence, etc.)

  • If you have more than two responses available be sure that they can be collapsed later into only two responses. For example if your response options on the survey are freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, these can later be collapsed to upper classman and lower classmen.

• At least 1 series of quantitative data (numerical ratio level data) (i.e. age, height, length, income, etc.) Note that these CANNOT be grouped on the survey.

After the surveys have been reviewed by the course instructor and revised by the group they can be administered as part of Group Project 2. Many times the class can provide a decent sample but your surveys can also be administered to family, friends, or even certain circles relevant to that topic (i.e. social media groups).

One member of each group should download the completed google doc from the google drive, save it as a Microsoft Word document and upload it to Moodle for your final submission of Group Project 1. This allows me to check the paper for plagiarism with Turnitit and to quickly provide comments that would be separate from your group comments in the google drive.

Every member of every group must submit a completed Peer Evaluation Form for each group project including this one. This should be complete INDIVIDUALLY and NOT as a group. Download the form from Moodle, enter the required information, save, and upload back to Moodle. The scores provided on these forms will determine if a reduction of individual point for group projects is necessary due to lack of participation.