a series that will culminate in your final project. The purpose of the final project is for you to develop and present a research proposal for a hypothetical experiment in the environmental sciences. By “hypothetical”, I mean you won’t need to run an actual experiment, just propose one (but you’re welcome to run it if you’d like). The experiment must be something that COULD be accomplished in a semester on a limited budget. In other words, the project you develop should be one you’d be able to run for this class. Below are specific components to include in your assignment
Section 1: Observation- I was out to fish in a couple of farm ponds. I fished all day and at the end of the day I then observed that all of the fish I caught in one of the ponds are over five pounds each, and that all of the fish we caught out of the other pond are well under one pound each.
Question: I wonder why the fish from the first pond are so much bigger than those of the second pond?
Hypothesis: I hypothesize that the fish are larger in the first pond because the fish in it are a different species than those in the other pond
Prediction: Based on this hypothesis, I predict that that based on the species will have to do with the size and weight found in each pond.
I’m looking for three main pieces to contribute with the information above: 1) descriptive title, 2) introduction to your proposed study, and 3) details of your experimental design. The introduction and experimental design components should be presented in separate sections with the titles “Introduction” and “Experimental Design”. For the Introduction section, I want you to present your observation, question, hypothesis, & prediction once again. This should be fairly easy since you completed this step in your last assignment. However, this time make sure to write your introduction in paragraph form. Many of you did this in the first assignment, but several of you just gave me a bulleted listing of items.
Section 2: For the Experimental Design section, you’ll need to clearly articulate how you plan to test your prediction. Here are some things for you to consider and report on in the Experimental Design section:
- Is your experiment a manipulative or natural experiment?
- Are you conducting a snapshot or a trajectory study?
- What are your predictor / independent variables and what type of variable are they?
Continuous, categorical, or ordinal? - What are your response / dependent variables and what type of variable are they? Continuous,
categorical, or ordinal? - What is the experimental unit? This is the object/entity receiving a treatment (manipulative) or serving as a single observation (natural).
- What type of generic statistical design? Regression, ANOVA, logistic regression, or Chi-square?
- What are some potential confounding variables that you might have to deal with? Can you
account for those confounding variables in your design? How so? - Exactly how are you going to measure those your responses? Be as precise as possible.
- How are you going to improve independence among replicates?
- How many replicates will you have?
- How are you going to randomize your design?
- Do you need a block design? Spatial or temporal (blocks scattered through space or blocks
scattered through time)? - Are you looking for interactions?
