Advice

There are several forms of advice I would give to future students about to embark on the research project. The first thing would be to make sure you choose a partner you can be compatible with, because it will make the process a whole lot easier. I can't imagine having to do that whole project with someone that you can't work with...it would be miserable. The second piece of advice I would give is to make sure you don't put it off until the last minute. Putting it off even until the last 2 weeks is not a good idea...it makes the last 3 days hectic. As long as you get a head start and work with someone you are compatible with everything will work out.

Other than that, I would just say make sure you work with something you are actually interested in. That too will make the process way easier. It always goes quicker if you actually like th material you are working with.

Project Review and Advice

Choose your partner wisely, preferably not a friend.

Review and Advice

I would tell future students to start early on this project and to get the surveys out as fast as they can. It takes a lot longer to complete everything than you expect, especially the final paper with all the calculations and graphs. Also, when picking a topic to survey people on, make sure the questions are clear and all the possible answers are available. This project should be something that you're interested in finding the results about because the more you care about your topic, the more effort you will put into it and the better your project will turn out. Lastly, I would tell them to choose a good partner to work with like I did. Good teamwork will make this project go a lot smoother and will make surveying less annoying.

Advice

Start early! Think of more than one idea or topic that you are interested in case your first idea wont work. Also make sure to follow the guidelines and create many questions that will give you numerical data. Don't blow off your test run of the survey. Find people who will give you proper feedback so that you can accurate revise your survey in order to receive the best results possible from your sample group.

Utilize online survey websites and use email to contact your subjects. Keeping things online helps keep them organized. Paper surveys can be lost or damaged. People also tend to check their email more frequently than their mailbox.

The calculations take a while, so do not leave them for the day before. Make sure to double check your work or have your partner look it over in case you missed anything. Also, work with a partner.

Advice

My advice to future students would be to use an online survey or send people the survey through email. This is a good way to save time when it comes to surveying people. Even though your response rate might be low, it wont necessarily be high if you do it any other ways. My partner and I went door to door and we ended up having a rather low response rate, as we ended up going to dorm rooms when people were not around. It was too time consuming going door to door and waiting for people to answer our survey, so we also did not end up getting as many responses as we would have liked.

Just make sure you stay caught up with your assignments and start early with your surveying so you can make up for people that haven't responded. It is important to have a good amount of responses otherwise it may be hard for you to do your hypothesis tests

Advice for the research project

My biggest advice is: Think clearly before drafting your questionnaire and collecting the data

Always go back to the guideline and requirement sheet Professor Stull gives you. Make sure your questionnaire will help you to collect enough data required before actually collecting the data, because if you have started collecting the data, and realized that you miss something, you have to start again.

Advice

Future students should keep these tips in mind when planning their project:
1. Staying ahead of deadlines and not procrastinating is crucial. Everyone says that, but it really is that important.
2. Work with a partner. It was nice to be able to divide up the work, otherwise it would have been really overwhelming.
3. Interesting topics will make this project much easier.
4. Always stay organized, because your results must be structured and clear.
5. Give your survey participants some incentive, like candy. It gets frustrating to have a low response rate, and investing $5 into a bag of candy will save you a lot of time and stress.
6. Talk to Chuck right away! The sooner that you can figure out potential survey problems, the less headache you'll have going into ninth week.
7. The more numerical data, the better.
8. Try to enjoy it as much as possible, and have fun!