Research Project Overview

Throughout the entire semester you will work with a co-author to analyze a data set and present the results of your research in a Research Poster symposium during finals week. Regular homework assignments will serve as a first draft of exploration into your research questions, and helps you build your story. However expect to visualize and analyze your data outside the those assignments.

You will build up your project in phases, revising multiple times. Here is the general outline, with each phase is explained in detail further below.

Phase 1: Data and Topic approval
Phase 2: Introduce your project and variables of interest
Phase 3: Explore your data and relationships
Phase 4: Analyze bivariate relationships
Phase 5: Summarize Findings

Poster development

You will be organizing your findings using a Quarto template that will lead you through an organized approach to reporting research. This short format will also help you concisely explain your research findings in a way will be easier to translate (fit) onto a poster.

This page is to explain the overall purpose and requirements for each phase. Submission details can be found in Canvas.

Phase 1: Data and Topic Propsal

Identify a research partner, propose a research topic and corresponding data set.

Open source data repositories to peruse:

Dr.D’s curated data sets (start here)
Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences Resources Portal
Data.gov
IPUMS
Teaching of Statistics in Health Sciences
City of Minneapolis data (includes police use of force)
Pew Research Center is “a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.”
Bureau of Labor Statistics
The All of Us Research Hub stores health data from participants from across the United States
Other? ❌ Sources not allowed: Machine learning repositories such as Kaggle or UCI. Data generated from experimental lab designs with few variables.

Criteria for choosing a data set

You either know something about the topic or it is something you want to learn about
File type must be a .txt, .csv, .xlsx or .xls file
File size is less than 1 Gig
A codebook or data dictionary that fully explains what each variable means is available.
There are at least 200 rows (observations), but ideally between 500-10,000.
There are 10 or more unique and interesting variables
- At least 4 quantitative variables
- Variables are not functions of each other (e.g. weight in lbs and weight in kg)
- Unique identifiers, dates, addresses, lat/long and other non-analyzable columns do not count

Your data set must be approved before you are allowed to work with it.

The sooner your data is approved the sooner you can work with it! If your proposed data set is turned down twice in a row get turned down, you will be required to use one of Dr. D’s curated data sets.

Phase 2: Introduce your research question and variables of interest

Make a copy of this Template and save it in your Research folder.
Fill out the following information using Homework 2 and 3.

Title: Give your project a clear title that names the main topic or relationship you are studying. The title should be specific enough that someone can tell what your project is about before reading the rest.
Introduction: Briefly introduce the general topic of your project and why it matters. This should be written in plain language and should help the reader understand the real-world issue behind your research question.
Background Literature: Use the sources from Homework 2 to explain what previous research says about your topic.
Research Questions: State both your primary (RQ1) and secondary (RQ2) research questions clearly. Make sure each question identifies the response variable and explanatory variable. If these questions have drifted since HW 2, briefly explain your reasoning.
Study Design & Data Source: Describe the you are using: Where you got it from (with citation), the population being studied, the unit of observation, and whether the study is observational or experimental.
Variables of Interest: List the variables needed for your research questions and describe what each one measures. Identify which variable is the primary response variable and which variables are explanatory variables.

Phase 3: Exploratory data analysis

Fill out the following information using Homework 3-5 as a guide

Data Management Methods: Copy the relevant code from Homework 3 to read in your raw data, select and clean only the variables mentioned above. Do not export a clean data set. Briefly explain (bullet points) each major cleaning step in words.
Response Variable Description: Visualize and describe the distribution of your primary response variable using the same style as Homework 4 (after feedback and revisions)
Explanatory Variable Description: Visualize and describe both your primary and secondary explanatory variables using the same style as Homework 4 (after feedback and revisions)
Descriptive Relationship: Visualize and describe the relationship between your primary response and presearch question using the same style as Homework 5 (after feedback and revisions).

Phase 4: Bivariate Inference

Fill out the following information using Homework 7-9 as a guide

Note that if you decided to change variables since the last time, you will need to update the corresponding descriptions and graphs in prior sections.

Statistical Analysis Methods
Bivariate Analysis Results
Model Assessment

Research Poster

You will transfer all findings into a research poster, print the poster, and then present your research to your classmates during our class final period in a poster symposium format.
Full guidelines including examples and evaluation criteria are written in this blog post.
Submit the poster file as printed to Canvas by the due date.

Draft version

This draft is graded based on how complete the poster is. You should consider this a draft that you would circulate to your colleagues for final review and comments. There is a rubric in Canvas with details on grading criteria and submission instructions.

Final Version

Upload your final poster as it is printed in PDF format Canvas.

Presentation at the Poster Symposium

This will be a joint poster symposium with the other section of Math 315. When not presenting, you will walk around and learn about others research. Ask the presenters questions and fill out an evaluation form as you go. Poster scoring follows the above evaluation criteria and will be done via Google Forms. The link to this semesters form is in Canvas. Printed copies will be available upon request.

Peer Review

After selected phases your development work will be submitted for feedback, peer review and scoring. It is expected that you revise your work after each phase and review. Details on peer review logistics will be shared in Canvas.

Project Grading Method

This work will be done through a series of revisions gaining feedback from the instructor at each phase.

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