Caleb Ferger Research Prospectus Reflective Essay COM499

To demonstrate learning outcome three, I chose utilize a collaborative effort of a research

prospectus for my Research Methodologies class in the Spring of 2017. For this project, we were

able to create our own groups and, based similar topics of interest, I found myself working with

two people interested in looking at judgement levels of individuals through the social media

platform, Facebook. For this project, we were required to follow the format of a typical thesis

while developing our own systematic research and analysis.

In doing so, we first started with the research proposal and accumulated sources for our

literature review. We decided that our focus was going to be based on the generational gap of

Facebook users, and how their judgement levels of certain photographs differ. For this project,

we used millennials and baby boomers as our targeted subjects. In doing the literature review, we

noticed many patterns that ultimately helped us to guide the basis of our analyzation instrument.

For this prospectus, we designed a vignette accompanied by a survey that prompted participants

to judge the photograph portrayed on the vignette through a series of questions and ratings on

Likert scales. In addition, we asked various demographic questions in correlation with the survey

to help further strengthen the results of our surveys by allowing any significant patterns among

various demographics to be reflected within the data. It was also required that we construct a

consent form outlining all of the necessary participant rights for legality purposes.

In addition, our procedure involved a 2x2 between-subjects factorial design testing our

hypotheses between male and female, and millennials and baby boomers. It was also decided that

we would designate time slots for both millennials and baby boomers to facilitate the survey of

the vignette in groups of seven to ten individuals. We thought that implementing the study in this

way would yield a higher response and completion rate than it would if the survey were

completed privately at an individuals leisure.

Caleb Ferger Research Prospectus Reflective Essay COM499

Finally, we determined that the data analysis would be measured through the use of an

ANOVA test with certain filler questions being removed from the analysis in order to maintain

the integrity of the results. None of the questions we provided were reverse scored.

Overall, this example is evident that I have skillfully understood what it means to conduct

systematic inquiry, and how to interpret the results of a study within a given context. This was

certainly one of the projects, here at Carroll, that allowed me to establish a connection between

these systematic inquiry skills and how they would be implemented in a post-graduation

application.