Assignment 1:

Armchair Study of Loneliness and the Internet

You have been by a policy think-tank to revisit a controversial issue: Does spending a lot of time on the internet lead to loneliness?

Step 1: Identifying your own biases

Start of by thinking about how you yourself feel about this issue. Do you think that spending time on the internet leads to social isolation and loneliness? Whatever your thoughts and biases are, lay them out. Write them down.

Step 2: Look at related research

http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/Press_Release/press_release.html

Critique this research. What are the problems with the method, or the conclusions they are drawing?

(I want a list of problems, with a few lines on each problem. Focus on the difficulty of making causal inferences from correlational data).

Step 3: Identify Idependent and Dependent Variables, Form formal Hypothesis etc.

Design three different studies to explore the same problem. Imagine that you have a lot of funds at your disposal (I don�t want your research design to suffer from real-life finance issues!). First identify the Independent, Dependent and Controlled Variables.

1) Research Design

-Independent Variable: What Independent Variables are you interested in. Identify them, define them, and name their levels

-Dependent Variables: What Dependent Variables are you interested in measuring. Identify them and describe how would you measure the.

-Controlled Variables: What are the issues that can confound the relationship between the independent and dependent variables that you have identified above. How are you going to control them?

Step 4: Develop three research designs

Now create three research designs to study the above problem. One of the methods should be a survey (using a questionnaire to explore this issue), and on of the methods should be an experiment (either lab experiment of field experiment). The third method can be entirely of your choosing.

You will be able to go by the Independent and Dependent Variables you have identified above to guide your design to differential degrees for the various methods. For example, it might be hard to directly link the IV and DV you have identified to the survey questions. In that case, use the IV and DV as general motivations for the study. It will be much easier to directly use the IV and DV in the experimental design.

Describe each design in a few sentences. Draw out the design wherever possible. End with a discussion of the kind of causal inferences you will be able to make from each design.

Notes:

Writing Style: Don�t give me page-long discussions. Restrict yourselves to a few sentences for each question. Wherever possible, try to make your answer a list of points.