Extra Credit is available for participating in the Poster Session and/or for making an oral presentation to the class.  To get extra credit, you must have your presentation posted by April 26.

1.  Visit the University of Michigan Survey Research Center and browse the codebook for the General Social Survey.  The subject codebook will be the most useful.

2.  Choose a variable that interests you for study.  You may use this as either an independent or dependent variable.  If you are a student in Ethics and Policy in Criminal Justice, your variable must have something to do with criminal justice.  If you are a Methods and Techniques of Social Research student, you can use any variable.  If you are taking both courses, you may do one presentation on a criminal justice topic and one on a different topic, or you can do a longer presentation on a single criminal justice topic.   The longer presentation should include six hypotheses and six tables instead of three instead of three of each.  If you do one presentation for both classes, you should submit it to both class's WEBCT sites or turn it in on paper at both classes.  You may do a single poster for both classes if you wish.

3.  Formulate three hypotheses relating your variable of interests to other variables in the data set.

4.  Use cross-tabulation analysis to test your hypotheses.  To find cross-tabulation, click on "Analyze."  If you need to recode your variables first, click on the button for "recode."  You need to save a copy of your results so yo can type them into Powerpoint, or else keep them open in one window while you work with Powerpoint in another.

5.  Prepare a Powerpoint presentation to present your results, using the template at:  http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/research.ppt.   You need to save a copy of this file on your own disk, then open it in Powerpoint and add in your own material.  Just start with my slides and edit them with your own material.  If you are not familiar with PowerPoint, you may find the instructions from the University of Canberra helpful.  It's a user friendly program, you can probably do pretty well just with the help that comes with it.  I did my first Powerpoint presentation on an airplane.
 

Note:  If you do not have Powerpoint on your computer, you can download the free Powerpoint Viewer program so as to view these presentations.  You will need to use Powerpoint either at home or at Rutgers to prepare this assignment.

6.  For an example of this project, view the presentation at: http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/ZODIAC.PPT.  If this file does not open on your computer, you need to download a copy of it, then open it with Powerpoint or Powerpoint viewer.

7.  To submit this assignment on paper, print out all the pages.  To submit it to WEBCT, upload your powerpoint file.

8.  There are two extra credit opportunities.  Extra credit should be an opportunity for enrichment, not a way to compensate for doing poorly on the tests.  If you have not been doing well on the tests, and your time is limited, you should put your energy into studying to raise your test grades.  You may do either or both extra credit assignments.  There will be no late extra credit assignments, you must have your presentation posted on WEBCT by 17:00 on April 26 and show up to make an oral presentation on April 29 or to present your poster on May 3.

1. Make an oral presentation to the class on your research.  If you wish to do this you must post your presentation on the Extra Credit Presentations discussion board on your class's WEBCT site by 17:00 on April 26.  You must be in class on April 29 prepared to give your presentation to the class.  If we do not complete all the presentations, you should also be prepared to present on May 1.  Since this involves no additional preparation, extra credit will be only 1% to 2% added to the final grade.
2. Participate in the extra-credit poster session on May 3.  To prepare you should print out your presentation and paste it on a poster (which you can purchase at Staples or another office supply store).  You should supplement it with additional materials include photographs, citations to the literature, clippings from newspapers and magazines, etc.  To participate in the Poster Session, fill out the online enrollment form. by 17:00 on April 26.  You must also post your presentation by 17:00 on April 26 on your class's WEBCT Extra Credit Presentations discussion board.  To get extra credit, make sure Dr. Goertzel sees your poster on May 3.  You must be there to present your poster.  Extra credit will be only 1% to 2% added to the final grade, so this is something you should do only if you are interested.