All papers submitted for the project (proposal, final report) should use the SOUPS formatting template (available for MS Word and LaTeX) and be submitted as PDFs.
Your specific project topic is left to the discretion of the team. A list of suggested topics are at the end of this document. I encourage you to read through them and think of a few that interest you before deciding. You can talk to your instructor to help winnow down a list.
Eventually, you must submit a initial project proposal for approval on one topic. The instructor may approve the proposal as is, or request changes and an updated proposal after discussing with the team.
If you would like to work on a topic not listed below, I recommend you contact the instructor (a short email describing the idea and general approach) prior to submitting a full proposal. This will help you avoid unnecessary work if it is idea is deemed out-of-scope for the course.
Your proposal should include the following information (approximately one paragraph per-point):
Here is an example proposal for reference. Note, this is meant to be an example to give you an idea of the content included in the propsal. You can ignore the formatting in this example because it was built using a different template.
Following submission of your proposal, your group will schedule meetings with the instructor to get feedback and provide updates. Once the topic is approved, you are expected to make edits on your initial proposals for a final proposal.
Submit your Inital Project Proposal here: https://canvas.tufts.edu/courses/27293/assignments/142775
As part of your project, you will be required to complete an IRB Application that contains the following information:
We expect you to uphold the same standards as an IRB approved research. This includes:
You are required to provide one status update for your project. This should include all the same material as the proposal, but with substantive updates on work completed and any changes that occurred since submission.
You will make two presentations about your project in class. The first is a "Lightening Talk" which will be a short 5 minute talk introducing the topic and your methods. This will enable all class members to learn about the work of everyone else.
The second presentation will be your final project presentation, which will be 12 minutes in length with 5 minutes of questions. These presentations should be inline with conference/workshop style presentations and provide some depth of the methods, analysis, and conclusions.
Your final report should be between 6-8 pages, not includeing bibliography and appendix. Your paper should follow an outline similar to the following:
Below is a non-exhaustive list of topics and some general research questions that you can use to build a proposal. You may also propose your own topics. Note that you will need to develop your own more specific research question and methods of investigation for your research.
In addition to original work, you may also perform a replication study that meaningfully confirms, questions, or clarifies the result of a prevoiusly published paper. Replications may follow the same protocol as the original study, or may vary one or more key variables to see whether the result is extensible (e.g., re-running a study with a sample from a different population). For example, a team could chose to repeat a study whose participants were mostly young and tech-savvy with an older population to see if the results held if users were less tech-savvy. Replication studies are very important in human-subjects research because it is very unlikely that a single study provides difinitive proof of any sufficiently important finding. Instead, we rely on testing ideas from multiple perspectives. These type of projects are highly encouraged.
Teams should clearly state why they decided to replicate their chosen study, describe the methodological differences precisely, and compare their findings with the results from the original study. Replication paper will be held to the same scientific standards as other technical papers. Please prefix the title of these papers with the word “Replication:” for your initial proposal.