Issues Research Lab 2012
Research Plan
Please return this document (or paste all the information into an email) to Jeanne () by October 24th at the latest. Sooner is better!
Group Members:
Which mentor helped you develop your hypothesis or plan?
Hypothesis
Use this space to write your group’s hypothesis:
What is your dependent variable (what will change)?
What is your independent variable (what is being manipulated)?
What is the population you’d like to be able to represent?
The Plan
This section should outline the methods you plan to use.
Who will be your sample?
Number of people:
Characteristics of these people:
(be specific; for example, say 50% male, 50% female; 100% 10th grade; 50% always buy lunch at school and 50% bring their own; etc)
What factors might influence your results? How will you account for that? (for example, you might ask your participants how hungry they are or what kinds of foods they normally eat).
Methods
This section should describe all the steps you’ll take to implement your research project. Answer the questions below (those that are appropriate) and add at the end any other steps you’ll take. Your final presentation should include a sequential list of all the steps.
If you are doing a survey, what questions will you ask?
(you may not have them all written just yet, but list the key ideas you need to investigate)
How will you distribute the survey? Do you think this will influence responses?
When will you distribute the survey? do you think this will influence responses?
What potential variables do you need to control? If you’re not doing a controlled trial, how will you account for these variables?
If you are doing an observation, what are you observing?
What difference (rather than manipulation) do you hope to observe?
Where, when and how do you plan to observe it?
If you’re doing an experiment:
What are you manipulating? How much/to what extent/how?
What change are you measuring? How much change do you expect to see (so you can plan for it)? How will you measure it?
Data collection
what kind of information will you need to record? (responses to questions, amounts of something, verbal statements, written responses to questions)
How will you keep track of all the data you collected? (for example, in an Excel spreadsheet, in the survey system you use, in a notebook, with photos, or something combination of ways?)
How will you make sure all your group members can access that information and it’s up to date? (think about shared file systems like dropbox or googledocs, or using email to communicate)
Who in your group is responsible for the data being complete and accurate?