IS4800 – Empirical Research Methods in Information Science

 

 

IS 4800 Empirical Research Methods - Spring 2012

 

  Team Projects
 

Study proposals and project reports must be submitted by Blackboard on the due dates.  Attendance is required on the 3 days when students will make presentations.


General

Each project has a 3-4 week duration. Study proposals should be 2-3 pages long, and should identify the subject population, sampling method, obtaining informed consent, and how data will be collected. You may not collect data until the instructor sends you an email explicitly approving your study protocol.  Your projects must follow the Northeastern IRB guidelines for student projects discussed in class. Your final reports must contain a description of your research methods, the raw data (as an appendix), descriptive statistics, visualizations, analysis (statistics), and discussion (interpretation & implications).

 

Presentations

Oral presentations must be at most 12 minutes in length (hard upper bound - you will be cut off if you go over), leaving 3 minutes critique per team. Your talk should encompass the main idea/research question, hypotheses (if appropriate), study design, results, conclusions, and (very important) appropriate visualizations of your results.  You can present off of your own laptop, but you must test your laptop with the classroom projector prior to the start of class.


Informed Consent

You may apply the Northeastern IRB guidelines for student research, described here.


Team Assignments

The team assignments for the three team projects can be found here.  The first person listed on each team (in bold face) will make the
presentation for that team, giving every student  the opportunity to make one presentation.


Proposals (2-3 pages)

I.  Brief statement of topic and purpose; what you hope to learn

II. Describe subject population and sampling

     inclusion/exclusion criteria; method of sampling or recruitment

III. Consent process

IV. Description of data collection procedures/instruments


Team Project #1 - Survey (Proposal Due Feb 16 at noon, Report/Presentation March 14)

Your team will use the survey method to conduct a descriptive and correlational study of some interesting behavior

among college-age individuals.  One of the following are suggested:
Health behavior 1: sleep
Health behavior 2: exercise
Political leaning (liberal--conservative)
Involvement with social networking
Social activism (political, environmental, community service)
Something else that you propose

You should create a composite measure(s) for the behavior you are studying, and in your final report you should describe
some effort to demonstrate the validity of your measure(s).

The relationship of your chosen behavior to one or more demographic variables (gender, class year . . .) or other variables of interest (particularly the participants' behavior, attitudes, or performance in academics) should be analyzed using inferential statistics. 

You may select your target population, sampling method, and technique for administering your survey.  Members of each team will be participants for 2 of the other teams' surveys.

Team Project #2 - Usability Test/Demonstration (proposal due March 16, presentations/papers due March 28)

First, read the chapter by Jakob Nielsen on usability testing. Also look at a short paper describing a usability study like the one you may decide to work on: An empirical comparison of the usability for novice and expert searchers of a textual and a graphic interface to an art-resource database by Andrew Dillon and Min Song.

Next, pick an obscure piece of software with an interactive user interface (possibly one you may have created for a class). Define three tasks (of increasing complexity) using the software and write them down on pieces of paper. The tasks should, in total, not take more than 30 minutes to perform. Select two or more measures from pages 194-195 of the Nielsen reading that you think may be relevant to evaluating the software.

 

Ask 3-5 classmates or friends to help you with a user study. Make sure they have not used the software before. Obtain verbal consent (as discussed in class). Provide a brief description of the software (but not how to use it). Then, give each participant each task and collect data (through observation or measurement) on their attempts to complete it. Do not provide any help. Collect your measures.

 

Submit a writeup of the software, tasks, test procedures, performance measures, data collection method(s), and results of your study.  Include descriptive statistics (and graphs) of your data.


Your writeup should include a Discussion section where you relate your measures to Nielsen's 5 usability goals, and propose any design recommendations resulting from your study.


Team Project #3 - Ethnography

Each team will conduct an ethnographic study to describe and analyze the patterns of activity focusing on one of the following three behaviors:
a. The use of Snell library
b. The use of cell phones/PDA's on campus
c. Students working individually and collaboratively in public areas

Dimensions that should be considered:
Physical/spatial
Temporal
Social
Task or activity