1. And Your Partner

2.   With a partner you will design and conduct a study over a topic of your choosing which abides by school policy.  With your partner you will present your study and your findings to the class.  You will be graded on both the quality of the presentation and the quality of the study.  The presentation should be 3 to 5 minutes. The General Description

3.  Now we do the dance of partners! Partner Time!

4.   Step 1: Exchange both phone and e-mail contact information with your partner.  Step 2: Think of 1 to 3 questions you would be interested in asking your peers, and try very hard to relate them.  I strongly recommend that at least one of them be numerical data.  Step 3: See Sanford with your idea to get advice and/or call dibs on that topic. Sanford’s Recommended Process

5.   Step 4: Pick either two groups or a group that can be easily split into two parts to serve as your population.  This will make your Final Project next trimester much, much easier.  Some common examples are Seniors vs. Freshmen or else among Seniors looking at Male vs. Female. Sanford’s Recommended Process

6.   Step 5: Locate other partnerships in your class which have the same target group, which will generally be seniors only or seniors and freshmen, in order to form a larger group.  3-5 pairs is about right.  The reason we do this is that instead of unleashing up to 58 surveys on separate sets of randomly selected classes, I am only unleashing about 12 surveys on sets of classes, maybe fewer.  This helps you out because you are not likely to be told no by every teacher.  More importantly, it helps me out because I have to teach this class next year even after you graduate. Sanford’s Recommended Process

7.   Step 6: Combine your questions into a single questionnaire for your group.  Step 7: Print out these questionnaires, and strongly consider using different colors of paper if you have more than two strata (and it works well even if you only have two strata).  Step 8: Have someone from your larger group work with Mr. Sanford to randomize your sample. Sanford’s Recommended Process

8.   Step 9: Administer your survey to the randomly selected sample.  I absolutely recommend against handing the survey to a teacher and asking them to give them out. You really should be there on whatever day you told that teacher you would show up to hand it out and collect it.  It is very important that you ask these teachers nicely, since none of them are obligated to allow you to do your study.  I recommend that if someone in your group is particularly well-liked by the given teacher that they be the one who asks. Sanford’s Recommended Process

9.   Step 10: The surveys need to be recorded somehow. I strongly recommend Excel. Each computer in the district has it, and basically any computer that has Microsoft Word does too.  Step 11: Use the data to form charts and graphs. (I’ll help once you have the Excel file.)  Step 12: Use the charts and graphs to draw some simple conclusions. (I’ll help once you have the charts and graphs.) Sanford’s Recommended Process

10.   Step 13: Build your presentation.  I tend to use PowerPoint.  Katlynn Marchant used some Mac-based presentation tool so she could incorportate explosions into her presentation.  Claire Frank used Prezzi because she likes it better, and even I agree that it tends to flow really nicely.  There will be further education, later, on building a good presentation. Sanford’s Recommended Process

11.   Or…  Instead of a questionnaire, you could design an experiment. You might be able to modify an experimental design write-up, but you are probably better off talking to me about reasonable experimental design models.  If you are willing to commit to a rigorously designed experiment, the advantage is that you don’t have to wait on others in your survey cluster. Sanford’s Recommended Process