IS4800 – Empirical Research Methods in Information Science

 

 

IS 4800 Empirical Research Methods - Falll 2010

 

Homework (Individual Assignments)

 

The following assignments are to be completed individually and submitted as hard copy in class on the due date. (Some assignments may be submitted via blackboard instead.) Be prepared to be called on to explain your answers/solutions.

Individual Homework #1 – Evaluating the Purpose and Products of Research Due Jan 18


One goal of this course is learning to study empirical research reports with a critical eye.  Read the two example research papers assigned for this week, and for each one, answer the following questions (also found at the end of Chapter 2 of your text):
 

  1. What was the purpose of the research, and who are the potential users of it?
  2. What reasons, if any, do the authors explicitly give as their motivation for this research?
  3. Which of the reasons listed in this chapter do you think might also apply?
  4. What were the outcomes (products) of the research?  Consider, but do not limit yourself, to the list of outcomes in the chapter.
  5. How well do you think the authors have explained and justified their purposes and products?

Individual Homework #2 – Ethics in Dealing with Human Subjects (Due Jan 25)
 


  1. Read the sample research plan  and a summary of the Ethical Principles of the Belmont Report.
  2. Describe how the plan addresses the three ethical principles of (a) respect for persons; (b) beneficience; and (c) justice, discussed in class.
  3. What is the overall purpose of the “Data and Safety Monitoring Plan” described in Section E.8 of the sample research plan?
  4. What is the overall point of Section “D.3.4.1 Study Subjects”?
  5. Pretend you are a member of Bohemia Medical Center’s IRB. The 2003 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requires that patients explicitly consent to all uses of data collected from them. Given this, and ethical principles discussed in the text and in class, what issues arise with the study recruitment procedures, discussed in Section D.3.4.2?

Individual Homework #3 – Descriptive Statistics in SPSS (Due Oct 8)


 This assignment is to be submitted as ONE file (MS word or pdf) using Blackboard. 


Enter the following customer support call center dataset into SPSS, ensuring that you properly encode and create value labels for the non-numeric data. Use the Frequencies function to compute: mean, median, mode, minimum, maximum, standard deviation, variance, frequency table and histograms for all variables for which these measures make sense. Use the Crosstabs function to show the percentages of job category by gender and the Custom Tables function to tabulate mean CallAnswerTime by JobCategory. Create a scatter plot of CallAnswerTime vs. YearsExperience. 

Note: Documentation of the Custom Tables function can be found here.

 

Turn in: the results of your analyses with narrative text describing the results.  We will discuss in class the requirements for presenting descriptive statistics with a narrative.


EmployeeID

Gender

JobCategory

YearsExperience

CallAnswerTime

CustomerSatisfaction

1

female

senior

10.5

5.5

82.5

2

male

entry

0.8

15.5

76.9

3

female

senior

7.0

7.0

89.4

4

male

entry

1.6

9.5

47.9

5

female

junior

7.0

6.0

88.3

6

female

entry

2.0

12.0

57.1

7

male

entry

1.5

10.5

63.2

8

male

junior

5.0

4.0

73.5

9

female

junior

3.8

12.5

68.5


 

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 2-3 week duration. Study proposals should be about 2 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.


Team Project #1 - Survey (Proposal Due October 19, Report/Presentation October 29)

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 fact-based variables of interest (such as, perhaps, employment level) 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 November 5, Report/Presentation November 16)

First, read the chapter by Jakob Nielsen on usability testing.

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 15 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 (No proposal necessary, Report/Presentation December 7)

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