How will my project be graded?

a. choice of research topic;
b. project design;
c. implementation of the project design;
d. data analysis and inference;
e. final report

The first factor that is judged is the quality of the research topic your group has chosen. It is important that you put a lot of thought into choosing a good topic [link to "choosing a topic"]. First and foremost the topic should be of interest to you. This project is meant to be a fun and interesting way of learning the basic concepts (and potential pitfalls) of statistics. Choosing a good topic will go a long way towards making the project an enjoyable part of the course. But, keep in mind that it is of utmost importance that the project also actually be implementable. When choosing a topic, make sure that you keep in mind that at the end of the day you are going to have to design a protocol [link to "design a protocol"] that needs to be implemented. Ask yourselves whether you will actually be able to collect the data you need in order to answer the questions [link to "research questions"] that you seek to address.

In order to give you some additional help in the process of choosing a good topic, you can read further about examples of bad topics [link to 'bad topics"], topics that sound good but aren't really implementable [link to "why some topics won't work"] and topics that have resulted in great projects [link to "choosing a topic"].

The next factor we look at in the grading process is your group's protocol design [link to "design a protocol"]. In particular we look to see whether the protocol is appropriately designed to answer the questions [link to "research questions"] that you seek to address and whether you will actually be able to carry out the protocol. Make sure that you put a lot of thought into the possible problems that you may run into, e.g. non-response to interviews [link to definition], and how to possibly avoid them.

The implementation of the protocol [link to '"implementing your protocol"] is the next factor we use to determine your project grade. We begin by looking at how the data was collected and organized [link to "organizing your data"]. Again, make sure you discuss any sources of bias [link to "bias"] in your data collection that you didn't think of when designing the protocol, and how you suspect it may affect your final analysis. Next, we look at whether or not your data analysis was correctly performed and whether you have made appropriate conclusions from the analysis.

Finally, it is very important that the final report [link to 'guideline on final report"] contains all the necessary information regarding your project. Make sure that the report is readable and understandable for somebody who was not involved in the project, and that it contains all the necessary steps [link to "check list of your project"] you performed. Remember that a good report should tell the "story" of your study. The reader should be able to re-create the study if they so wish.