COMM 301L: Empirical Research in CommunicationProject guidelinesWhy do this?There is no substitute for the experience of actually doing research, from conceptualizing the researchproblem, to collecting the data, to analyzing and making sense of the data, to writing the research paper. This project allows students to gain that experience in an abbreviated yet meaningful way. Project deliverablesAs the project progress, you will be required to summit interim deliverables, including summaries of prior research, detailed descriptions of the necessary operationalizations, and so on. The final product of this project is a paper reporting the research. TAs will give more details about how the paper should look like in due time.Work organization, work values.You should work in a team of 3-5 members. Each team member must be in the same laboratory session, unless formally permitted by the laboratory instructor.Let us make our positions explicit about working in teams. Working in teams presents for both the students and the instructors promise and hazards. The promise is that more gets accomplished with less effort. As students, you share the work, and as instructors, we end up with less number of papers to grade.The hazard is that group dynamics can get very difficult, and people can get very frustrated and very angry. The most common problem is having a mismatch in the levels of effort and commitment amongst the individuals: Some do most of the tasks, while others shirk from their responsibilities. Some work to make progress, while others, with their lack of effort, impede progress. Those who work hard feel taken advantage of. At times, the slacking individual is cast off the team, and then, thatindividual in turn panics, and tries to make the laboratory instructor perform a miracle a week before the research paper is due.So, this is my personal recommendation: Be part of a team if you are willing to, and are confident that, you can contribute. This means being able to take initiative to do the needed tasks, being available to meet with others. Do not attach yourself to a team hoping to get something for nothing or very little. When you are part of a team, it means that others necessarily depend on you; you become partly responsible for an outcome that will affect others. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot fulfill your obligations to the team, be proactive in resolving the situation. For example, if a crisis in your personal life takes away your ability to devote time and energy to the tasks you are responsible for, let your colleagues know immediately, and make an effort to craft an amenable compromise.As instructors, we do not wish to have you be in a situation with unbearable group dynamics. If you find yourself in such a situation, do come to the instructors (TAs) to talk about it. 1COMM 301L: Empirical Research in CommunicationProject guidelinesAlso, know the type of work behaviors that will lead to better or worse outcomes:The demands the project place on you are such that they reward consistent effort. You absolutely needto keep pace. The success of a prior phase will strongly determine the success of the subsequent phases. For example, if you do not design well the procedures for collecting data, the data collected will be mostly flawed, and the data analysis will yield unusable findings. Also, the project has firm deadlines for certain phases, and missing them will severely hamper your ability to finish the project well and on time. One sure way not to do well in the project is to start in the final few weeks of the semester. I have witnessed the plight of students, in the last week of the semester, huddling around computers in the laboratory, trying desperately to make sense of the data, but failing miserably because they did not make the earlier efforts to think through the measurements and protocols. This isa situation I strenuously want you to avoid. So, work hard and work consistently.2COMM 301L: Empirical Research in CommunicationProject guidelinesTypical phases in the research process Select the topic, and draft researchable questions.To start, the best initial criteria for selecting a topic to work on is your inherent interests in communication phenomena. We will spend time in lecture and in the laboratory sessions to discuss this aspect in some detail. Next, given several interesting topics, it is important to select a topic that will allow you to complete the project successfully in a timely manner. The key is to translate the interesting topic into researchable questions. Researchable questions are questions focused enough to allow data to be collected and analyzed within the course’s constraints. This means exploring a limited number of well-defined variables. We will spend time in lecture to talk more about this, and your laboratory instructor will also guide you in drafting researchable questions.This do-ability criteria needs to be emphasized. As scholars, you will encounter many interesting questions, many of which are not do-able within the real constraints you face. For this course, it is more important to finish a project with moderately interesting questions, than not to finish being hampered by supremely interesting, but difficult-to-research, questions.Note: If you are working on another research project in another course formally or with another instructor informally, and would like to leverage your efforts into this course’s research project, come see me to discuss this possibility soon. I am open to such an arrangement. At the same time, that decision is not mine alone to make; the other instructor has to agree as well.Review existing research.You should review existing research if only to find out what has been done before in terms of trying to answer those research questions. Research practice does not favor reinventing wheels. Existing research can give you ideas on how you can proceed with your questions. You can certainly replicate existing methods, measurements, and procedures, as well as modifying or extending them.You should look through the existing academic research on the topic and questions. Refer to the handout “Searching for prior research” to guide you.The aim is to obtain 3 to 5 journal articles most relevant to your topic and research questions. Next, get those selected articles, read through them. Pay attention to the similarities and differences in how the concepts were defined, which designs were used, and