Group Project
(The full list of group projects)
Objectives:
To practice skills on conceptualization, questionnaire design, data collection, dat analysis, and data reporting in a real-life context.
Procedure:
1. Conceptualization (submitted by 3 Feb for T01 or 10 Feb for T02): select a "communication-relevant" topic (i.e., involving communication as independent and/or dependent variable); formulate hypothesis(ses) to predict how the communication variable(s) affect (or is/are affected by) other relevant variable(s); draw a conceptual framework to describe the above hypothesis(ses). In Babbie's language, this is an "explanatory study" (Ch. 4).
- Submit the first draft of your conceptual framework and hypotheses here.
- Check your group membership and inform the instructor if there is an error.
- Submit the revised draft of your conceptual framework and hypotheses here (due 17 Feb).
2. Questionnaire design (first draft submitted by 17 Feb for both T01 and T02, final draft by 24 Feb): create one or more question(s) to measure each of the independent and dependent variables in the above hypothesis(ses) and conceptual framework. Use the most appropriate format (e.g., open-ended, multiple choice, multiple selections, attitudinal scales, etc.) for each of the questions. Use English for the draft regardless of what language will be used in the online version. Before each question of the questionnaire, indicate the relevant concept name from the conceptual framework (see a sample format of the questionnaire).
- Submit the first draft of your questionnaire here (due 17 Feb).
- Check general comments on your dirst questionnaire draft here.
- Submit the revised questionnaire here (due 24 Feb).
3. Data collection (completed by 17 March): post the questionnairein an online survey website (e.g., www.my3q.com) and widely announce the survey through your emails, BBSs, blogs, social networks, etc. to recruit respondents to participate. The minimal number of respondents for each group is 400. No duplicated respondents (i.e., who answered twice or more) are allowed. Yourself should not serve a respondent, which is considered academic dishonest behavior.
- View online questionnaires of all groups.
- All groups need to submit the resulting data in ZIP format that includes both CSV (i.e., the original file format) and SAV (i.e., the SPSS data format) files by 17 March. Click here to submit the the data.
- If any group has not met the quota of 400 by 17 March, the group can and should keep the online questionnaire open with additional recruitment efforts, and update the resulting data (i.e., download and import the data into SPSS and perform your data analysis based on the updated data) until the quota is met or the deadline of data analysis (31 March) is due, whichever is earlier.
4. Data analysis (completed by 31 March): perform the following tasks:
- download the online survey data;
- import the data into SPSS;
- revise variable names, create variable labels and value labels, and define missing values for each questio (see comments on data1);
- delete invalid (e.g., incomplete or duplicated) cases by runnign frequencies to identify such cases (see comments on data1);
- submit your final cleaned version data (i.e., with proper variable names, variable labels, value labels, missing value definition, and invalid cases removed) in a zip file including both csv and sav files by 31 March;
- run frequencies analysis of each question to obtain descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, median, percentage, etc.) and, if necessary, further clean data (i.e., repeat c and d);
- run crosstabs and/or compare means to test your hypothesis(ses).
5. Group presentation (17 April for T01 or 23 April for T02): each group presents the follwoing to the tutorial session:
- hypothesis(ses) and conceptual framework
- online survey procedure and outcome (i.e., duration of the survey, methods of recruitment, completion rate, quality of the responses, etc.)
- descriptive statistics of the sample (i.e., distribution of demographic and dependent variables)
- results and interpretations of hypothesis-testing (i.e., findings from 4f)
- discussions of the theoretical and/or practical implications of the findings (3 and 4)
6. Group report (submitted by 4 May): each group submits a report (i.e., an essay based on the presentation in 5), with 2000 words in the main text plus tables, charts, references, questionnaire, and other appendices. (Hint: follow specific instructions in week 9 lecture notes and week 11 lecture notes)