Extra Credit Proposal Instructions
Testing Causal Hypotheses

To get extra credit, you must do the following:

Note:  A sample extra-credit project, "Happiness and the American Dream" by Linda Anderson is available on our class's WEBCT site.
  1. By April 14.  Complete the Proposal Form and submit it to the Assignment Drop Box by April 14.  No extra credit projects will be accepted unless a proposal has been submitted on time.  Proposals will be accepted only in WEBCT.   To submit a proposal, open this file in a word processor, type the answers to the questions, save it in *.doc or *.rtf or *.html format, and submmit it to the drop box.
  2. By April 20, 10:55 a.m.  submit any first draft materials that you have completed to the Assignment Dropbox.  We will work on these projects during class today
  3. On Tuesday, April 25 - bring your poster to class with your research materials and illustrative graphics..
  4. On Wednesday April 26.  Bring your poster to the Department Poster Session.  You should register online with the department so as to be listed in the program. 
The projects will involve doing a causal analysis.  You may choose one of three methods, depending largely on the data set you choose to use:
  1. Multivariate cross-tabulation analysis.  This is appropriate for survey data which is measured in categorical form.  You may use the GSS or NES data sets for this analysis.  The professional versions are available and offer many more variables.
  2. Multiple regression or path analysis.  This is appropriate for data measured in continuous form, such as in the USA data set.  There are many more data sets available in the professional microcase
  3. Trend analysis using Excel.  This is similar to the analysis in the Crime Drop paper we read.  It involves using data from the USTrend.mc4 or gss7204.mc4 data sets with the professional microcase Historical Trends module.  These are available on our WEBCT in the "Microsoft Statistics Software" assignments folder.