Procedures

  1. Instructor meets with representative of community agency to discuss mutual opportunities, needs, and expectations.
  2. Preliminary, verbal agreement between the community agency and the instructor to pursue collaboration. Community agency indicates the semester(s) for which they would like to provide data.
  3. Two months prior to beginning of the semester, community agency gives final approval to participate in this project in the form of a draft of data expected to submit (mock spreadsheet or list of variables).
  4. Three weeks prior to beginning of semester, community agency provides final dataset for students use. Community agencies are encouraged to provide broad or specific questions they wish answered through the analysis.
  5. Upon beginning of course, students receive instruction and they complete an online training for ethical conduct in research and statistical analyses.
  6. Within 2 weeks of class start, students choose a dataset to work on, and sign an agreement stating they will only use this data for purposes of this course and will not share the data or results outside the purposes of this course.
  7. Instructor provides instruction, close supervision, and feedback to students as they complete Research Project (RP) assignments. A group of students will work on each dataset, with each individual student developing and testing his/her own hypothesis, and submitting his/her own assignments.
  8. Near the end of the course, students present research findings to community agency personnel, the instructor, and fellow class members.
  9. Each student completes a written report. The instructor grades these reports - a copy of those reports that receive a grade of "A-" or higher are given a final edit by the instructor and shared with the community agency.

 

NOTE: Research services can be provided to community agencies incrementally. Meaning, one semester, a group of students may conduct an analysis of the data. The next semester, another group of students can follow-up with a more in-depth study, with updated data, and/or with more variables in the data.