Remembrance of Research Past

Hello All:

This will be my final blog post for the year. It has been a wonderful journey with many ups and downs over the past two years in Seminar and Research. I have gained many skills and fought through challenges. Even though during the process there were definitely times I was not happy with my choice, looking back on it from the end, it was definitely a worthwhile experience.

Me at the beginning of AP Seminar

At the beginning of Seminar, my writing skills were ok and my argumentation skills were pretty bad, so it was definitely a learning experience for me. I feel like I honed my craft very well over the course of the year and by my last paper, I truly had produced college-level work that I was proud of. The group projects also helped my collaboration skills a lot, since we all had to merge our voices into one coherent paper. I remember during our first group presentation, Kristiana blanked on one of her slides and I just stepped right in to give her some time to get her bearings back. This helped us both learn teamwork as well as how to handle a difficult situation on the fly. It was not always easy; the only time I ever pulled an all-nighter in high school was for Seminar. But afterwards I learned how to better manage my time and balance a heavy workload.

Then came Research...

The whole research process was definitely a learning experience. At the start of research, I was very sure that I wanted to do price anchoring and only that area of behavioral economics would yield a good research project. Pretty soon after, I began reading sources on behavioral influences and social behavior and time pressure... I shifted my focus from price anchoring to gambling and behavioral effects, which actually turned out to be a more interesting area of research for me. Writing a coherent literature review was a struggle at times, especially since the premise of my lit review was that the three effects are currently not comparable. So trying to tie them together was a struggle at first.

Once I got my methods, getting participants was the biggest struggle of the whole research process. I had like 7 participants 2 days before the study, so I just emailed everyone I knew and managed to get 40 people to come.

My critiques on research would be that towards the end of the class, the editing of other people's papers got a little tedious and became a lot of work. So much to the point that I did not have as much time to edit my own paper because I was spending so long on other people's. I think that reducing that to maybe two per week could improve the class. Overall, I am glad that I did AP Research because I feel like it will give me a leg up in college when applying for research positions and it will also help me perform and know what I am doing once I get there.

The two year journey has been crazy. I am now officially retired from AP Research (after blog comments of course)! (527)

The Final Sprint

Hello All:

This is my second to last blog post of the year and my final one before the presentation this Friday. As research nears to an end, there is still so much work to do to make sure we end senior year with a bang and put forth our best foot on presentation day. Though my first presentation was definitely rough, I got some good feedback and am ready to fix it and make the final presentation spectacular.

My main issue with the presentation was lack of urgency and pace, I kind of meandered through the presentation and approached it with a very chill attitude. I think that comes partially from my personality and partially from not knowing my script as well as I will during the actual presentation. Since it took me a moment to remember what I was supposed to say, it may have come off as slow-paced and relaxed. I also tended to repeat myself and attempt to explain things in various ways, so the presentation got a bit circular. I think this is also largely caused by me not knowing my script as well as I should. This can be easily cleared up by my next practice presentation and I will be perfectly fast, clear, and linear during my actual presentation.

In terms of my slides, they started out a little disengaging and I have introduced some animations to help engage my audience more in my slides but I definitely still have some things to fix before my next practice. I have used fading in to allow me to emphasize concepts that I discuss aloud but I need to get more smooth with bringing them in at the right time. One concept that has really worked for me is showing a blackjack table and cards and using those to explain my procedure and the different changes. This has seemed to use a much more visual medium to engage my audience in what I am saying, rather than just showing the words I am saying on the slides. I have tried to expand this concept to the rest of my presentation and use diagrams to illustrate my points and make the audience more engaged with what I am saying.

Hopefully, with more practice and these changes to my slides I will be able to have an engaging and exciting presentation that truly reflects the hard work I have put into my project. As we come down the final stretch, we must sprint to the finish and give a great presentation and it will all be worth it. (431)

Slide Time

Hello All:

This week has been an especially crazy week of emotional ups and downs for the entire senior class. As college decisions came out, I just wanted to say how proud and excited I am for each and every member of the Class of 2017!! From becoming new blue devils to sun devils, cardinal to bears, we killed it!! Anyways, in the world of AP Research, I have still been hard at work on my presentation and slides and am so excited to share my research with the BASIS Scottsdale community.

Ideally, a powerpoint interacts with the presentation and supplements the information being said by the speaker. A great presentation flows seamlessly through the paper in an orderly fashion and does not get too bogged down in every detail included in the paper. A great powerpoint keeps the audience engaged in the presenter's speech by providing visual aids and emphasizing key terms. A presentation should follow a script and the powerpoint should be built in to the script rater than separately. That being said, my presentation definitely fits some of those categories but not all of them. I feel like I use the slides to keep the audience engaged, especially since I added animations and pop ups to go along with exactly what I am saying. I also added some audience participation pieces to my presentation in which I ask the audience to think of numbers and then demonstrate some of the effects briefly. I think I can cut even more of the details out of parts of my presentation, since there are definitely times when I try to explain the nitty gritty to my audience. I also feel like I can still improve a few of the slides by adding more pictures or changing some of the backgrounds. The problem I have had with changing backgrounds is that sometimes the text becomes hard to read, so I will have to find a balance.

Originally, I approached my AP Research presentation very similarly to a Seminar one, but I have now realized that they are very different. In Seminar, we are just explaining and synthesizing others' arguments, so the slides are more minimal to complement the speech. However, in Research, we designed our own methods and got our own methods, so we need to use more dynamic slides to engage the audience in our thinking process as well as keep them focused for a significantly longer presentation.

My plan for practicing the presentation is to record myself numerous times and watch what
I do well and badly. In order to become fluent with the presentation without sounding robotic, I plan to learn the ideas I need to cover as well as key phrases to use rather than a word-for-word script. Since my powerpoint has many animations, I will be able to stay on track by pairing key phrases with animation sequences and clicks, so I can keep up with the slides without sounding so unnatural. Recording myself will help me see awkward things I do with my body and hands and gain the perspective of my audience while practicing. I am really excited to do present my findings and hopefully will perfect everything in the next week or so!! (540)

Presentation Time

Hello All:

The end of the year is getting so close!! It's so exciting but also so scary. Our papers are nearing their final stages and our presentations are beginning to take shape. As we move on to the presentations, it is extremely important to understand the rubric and how my script and slides fall into it right now. One thing I will say is that I think I went way overboard with the script and had a lot of trouble cutting out all of the information from my paper. I have grown so near to every word in my paper that it is painstaking for me to take out one of my babies (I mean ideas) from the presentation. Hopefully you guys can reign me in and help me condense my paper into true presentation form. It will not be an easy ask but I am excited to get it done.

I think I do a really good job of completing the first two rubric rows. It may be overly long-winded and over the top but it definitely still gets the job done. I discuss the research design fully and explain every step of my experiment and how it relates to my research question. At the end of the presentation I also bring it all back together and discuss my findings in relation to the prior literature, connecting claims and bringing the argument of my research full circle. I also think I identify the consequences and limitations of the research clearly (but not concisely), completing row two of the rubric.

Rubric row three was something I do not think I have put enough of into the script. Although I did state my hypothesis after my research question, I never fully and explicitly articulate how the findings caused my own personal growth and opinions to change. I definitely explain how the research relates to the prior literature that I explained, but I do not really relate that to my hypothesis directly as much as I probably should.

For rubric row four, I feel like I have pretty engaging and easy to follow slides, but how I score on the rubric will depend on my delivery of the presentation. I'm sure that with practice I will be able to engage the audience and deliver a great presentation.

Hopefully this week I will condense my script and be on my way to a great presentation!! (403)

Refine Refine Refine

Hello All:

I want to start this blog post with a moment of silence for my bracket. With Duke's loss, I am officially done for.

Anyways, after a great week of commenting on each other's papers and reviewing my results section with Mrs. Haag, I think my paper is getting to a really great place. Shoutout to Kristiana, Grace, and Sunskruthi for taking the time to read my paper and comment thoroughly; I really appreciate the feedback.

After reading their comments as well as reading my paper over again, I realized a few weak spots that needed to be fixed in my paper. Transitions were somewhat of an issue for me throughout. Many of my transitions sounded very formulaic and robotic and did not really guide the reader through the flow of my paper. In a few sections, I used the subtopic break a s a crutch to transition without really transitioning and explaining myself. In order to fix that, I need to reword a few transitions to sound more natural and add a few transitions in places that are currently lacking.

I tended to repeat myself and redefine some terms numerous times, which cost me a lot of words. Especially this occurred about the SOEP survey, which I mentioned three different times and justified it each time. In order to fix that I will try and cut out unnecessary explanation, which will also help me cut some words.

I also found that my results section, especially the statistical significance was lacking and confusing. Last week at my meeting, Mrs. Haag and I talked about changing the benchmark from risk-neutral to no risk, so that my calculations and graphs can be more easily understood. I am trying that along with the risk-neutral format to see which one works better in the paper. Hopefully by fixing the graphs, which will not change the actual results (only the numbers will be a little different), I can make that section clearer and bolster my paper.

In terms of the AP rubric, I think I have achieved the middle mark for all sections for sure. I think changing my graphs to help improve my statistical analysis and results section will allow me to get full marks in 5, 6, and 7, which deals with the results section and the graphs. I also think the inclusion of the table outlining the procedural changes will help me score higher for the figures and charts as well as the methods section, since it makes my methods clear and easily replicable. The one place I think I am lacking is that my voice needs to always be distinguishable from the sources'. Though for the most part I am distinct, there are a few spots that I use extended quotes, so I need to fix that in order to score the highest. I'm excited to keep making my paper better and to help my peers with their papers this week. Thanks for reading my post!! Here's Patrick to tell a classic Max-story. (503)

23 Pages Later

Hello All:

I had a great week in Sweden and Denmark and will be peppering in pictures I took from the IceHotel (Yes, it is what it sounds like) and Copenhagen throughout the blog post. This week was not only exciting one for me because of travel, it was also an extremely important week for my research project. I finally finished the paper (sort of). Though I still have a lot of editing a cutting down to go before the paper takes its final form, the all sections of the paper are finally done. At the beginning of the year, I couldn't even imagine what was going to become of my research paper. Now that I have the 23 page behemoth sitting in front of me, I can't believe that my work has really culminated into a tangible product. I'm extremely proud of how far we have all come as a class and am excited for the rest of the journey.

The ice room my mom stayed in

The ice bed Will and I slept on (it had a mattress don't worry)

In order to ensure that my paper is the best it can be, I need to go back and understand what is strong and why and what is weak and why, so I can make the weak parts and ultimately the whole paper strong. Overall, I think my paper is pretty strong right now, but it can and will be greatly improved before I turn it into the college board. I am a little over the word count (600 words, which is comparatively not that much), so I need to fix that and become a little bit more concise with my ideas.

I feel like the strongest parts of my paper are my discussions of each of the effects individually in the literature review and the explanation of the specific methods and changes for each effect in the methods section. In both of those parts, I am pretty concise and clear, which is important to understanding the paper. In my literature review, I think I clearly convey the prior research and how different sources converse with each other. I feel like I especially do this in the time-pressure section when I discuss the conflict between Dhar and Nowlis's ideas about choice deferral and Young et al.'s findings on risky behavior in time-pressure situations. That section of my paper shows a clear gap, which is imperative to a great literature review. In the methods section, I feel like I do a great job of laying out the changes that were made for each group and explaining how those changes provide a standardized way of measuring behavioral changes.

Copenhagen

The weakest parts of my paper I think were the transitions and the statistical significance portion. In terms of transitions, I feel like I sometimes tried too hard to justify moving through the paper and sometimes I didn't include anything. Although I have improved my connection between the subtopics greatly over the course of the year, I still feel like the different effects can be connected better and more smoothly in the paper. For my statistical significance section, I feel like I just gloss over the significance and need to beef that section up a lot. Although I do discuss the less than 10% increase being negligible because that is less than one person, I do not really do anything else to show why my results are significant. If I want my paper to be great (which I do), I will need to fix this section as well as my transitions.

Northern Lights

I hope you have enjoyed the pictures from my trip throughout the blog post and that you enjoy reading my paper. (613)

One more northern lights picture

Discussing the Discussion

Hello All:

It's spring break!!!! Woohoo!! Oh wait...we don't have one. But we are off all the time so we win.

Anyways, this week is a really exciting one for me. For my brother's spring break, my family is taking a trip to Denmark and Sweden (Look out for pictures on next week's post), so I am posting my blog a little early to make sure I don't miss it with my shaky internet situation as I will be traveling. Even though I will be spring breaking, my research will not be. Our discussion section is still due at the end of next week and I will be perfecting it in my extra time on my vacation. There is still so much to do and all this research has me like...

In order to better understand how to perfect my discussion, I have looked at the discussions of a few of my sources and tried to take out the useful parts. I found that looking at the same sources I looked at the results sections for was the most useful for me, since I was able to better understand how they linked the two sections since I analyzed both. Thbus, I will be looking at the same sources as last week again.

1. The Near-Miss Effect in Blackjack: Group Play and Lone Play by Gunnarsson, Whiting, and Dixon

After they found that people's hand ratings changed after the research induced the near-miss effect with the participants. The discussion explained how this new idea fit into the previous knowledge of the near-miss effect. It then discussed the significance of the findings not only in terms of gambling but in terms of behavioral psychology as a whole. It ended with some limitations and new questions that arose from the research. It did a great job of integrating the new findings with prior research to create a nuanced discussion.

2. The Effect of Time Pressure on Consumer Choice Deferral by Dhar and Nowlis

The study had participants choose between risky and safe choice or defer choice to a later time while under time pressure or no time pressure conditions. After it was found that choice deferral was prevalent among time pressured participants, the researchers tried to explain this using prior research. They discussed the significance of the new findings in consumer choice theory as well as behavioral economics. They asked further questions about the type of good or risk that will induce choice deferral most often. They overall did a great job of integrating the new research with long-standing theories of the field.

3. Priming Motivation Through Unattended Speech by Radel, Sarrazin, Jehu, and Pelletier

The study was investigating auditory priming's effect on people's motivation and actions. They found that people would perform actions and choose images based off of unconscious auditory stimuli. They explained this in terms of psychological priming and the theory behind it. They also related it to past research and asked more questions about the relation of auditory and visual priming.

What I have gained from these discussions is that I need to make sure to explain my findings in terms of the prior research and relate my results and lit review. I also need to assess my research and its limitations and pitfalls. By doing this, I will be able to draw the real significance from my project. I will finally have to ask further questions based on my limitations as well as those that arise from the research and that it doesn't cover. For example, one question I have is, how will group behavior affect blackjack behavior while the effects are induced?

I'm super excited for my research to come together and my trip this week. It's going to be a great spring break. (627)

Getting Ready for the Results Section

Hello All:

This week has been another eventful one for me and my AP Research project. Personally, I got a job at Raising Cane's, so come on down and have some chicken fingers. With my new job, I have had a little less time to fool around during the day. But the time dedicated to my research project has not really changed. This week, we gathered the results and analyzed them and now we are moving on to writing the results section. So in order to get a better understanding of how our results section should look, we have looked at other results sections from other studies that used similar methods. I am going to go through three different studies and note what I saw in their results sections and then I will hopefully be able to find the commonalities that I can use for my own results section.

1. The Near-Miss Effect in Blackjack: Group Play and Lone Play by Gunnarsson, Whiting, and Dixon

This study had participants play blackjack hands and rate each hand they got on a scale of 1 to 10. In order to show the average rating of each participant for each possible hand, they used a few bar graphs the mapped the hand rating vs the distance from 21. The study then did statistical analysis on the numbers to see if they were significant and they showed those in a table as well. It then explained the statistical calculations and how they showed that people changed their average hand rating after the near-miss effect was induced.

2. The Effect of Time Pressure on Consumer Choice Deferral by Dhar and Nowlis

The study had participants choose between risky and safe choice or defer choice to a later time while under time pressure or no time pressure conditions. The results section consisted of a table recording what people chose under time pressure vs no time pressure and the percentage of people who chose anything at all under both conditions. The paper then detailed the observations of the experimenters and discussed the statistical significance of the numbers they found. It explained that it was not by chance that more people deferred choice during the time pressure condition.

3. Priming Motivation Through Unattended Speech by Radel, Sarrazin, Jehu, and Pelletier

The study was investigating auditory priming's effect on people's motivation and actions. The results section consisted of a bar graph showing the change in motivation to do activities between primed and unprimed groups. It then explained what the results meant. Next it showed a table with the change in word choice between primed and unprimed groups. It then explained the statistical significance and showed why the auditory priming was actually affecting the behavior of the subjects.

Though looking at many different sections and coming up with an idea is daunting at first, breaking it down helped me come up with an idea for my results section. Since all the studies used graphs, and mostly bar graphs, I should use bar graphs along with tables to show my change in betting caused by each of the effects. I need to explain what the bar graphs mean and how we can draw conclusions from them. But in order to draw any meaningful conclusions, I will have to fully explain all the statistics I did to show significance and calculate all of the numbers in my experiment. I think I have a pretty good idea of what I am going to do, but I will make any necessary changes as next week goes on. I'm excited to see my experiment and research paper begin to take its final shape. (608)

The Mystery of My Data

Hello All:

This past week has been extremely important for us in AP Research. We have finished up the data collection and now our projects are really coming into shape. Specifically with my project I had 40 total participants, which is exactly the number I was looking to get, over the course of four days. As the experiment progressed, it was really exciting to see the data come together and begin to come to some preliminary conclusions based on my observations. Right now, I have data that records whether each participant hit or stay on a 15 after exposure the the effect for their group as well as observations of their behavior and data on any other ambiguous hands the participant saw. In order to qualify my data and better understand it, I had each participant fill out a survey about their inherent riskiness levels. Now that the data collection has been finished, I have all the clues to the mystery of which effect has the largest influence on blackjack behavior. Just like Sherlock, I need to find the best way to put the information together.

In order to understand which one is the most influential effect, I need to understand which effect increases people's risky behavior the most. In order to measure risky behavior, I recorded whether each participant hit or stay on a 15, which is shown to be indicative of risk taking in blackjack. The risk assessment surveys that the participants took were also scored to better understand the inherent risk levels of each group. The risk assessment survey consisted of questions in which participants rated their likelihood of performing many risky activities on a 1 to 10 scale. I used a weighted average, with some activities being more influential than others, to give each person a riskiness score. I have calculated each person's riskiness score and taken the averages of each group. In order to understand how the effects change riskiness, I will compare the average score of each group to the percentage of times that people hit for that effect. Then I will try and calculate a change in riskiness to show how each effect is actually changing risky behavior. I have talked to Mr. Peacher and am planning on talking to him early next week about the data analysis to make sure it is sound. Right now, I have found that the control group hit 6 out of 10 times and the other groups have increased the amounts of hitting, with the near-miss group having all 10 people hit. Once I understand the inherent riskiness of each group, I can make conclusions from that data, but right now it looks very promising. This week while I'm trying to figure out my data analysis I may be like this.

But once the data has been analyzed, I will be in a great position and will be feeling more like this.

This week is crucial for the strength of my project, but I'm confident that it will turn out great and yield very interesting results. The fourth series of Sherlock came out recently and I'm so excited to watch it as well as solve the mysteries of my project. (533)

Hustle

Hello All:

This week has been a very eventful one for my research. I began to conduct my experiment and had my first 27 participants come in on Wednesday and Friday. The experiment has been going extremely well and everyone has had fun and yielded good results. But it was not as simple as it sounds. On Tuesday at 2 pm I only had 6 participants signed up for my first day of research and maybe 5 more over the next few days of my study. The email to the BASIS Scottsdale parents hadn't gone out yet. I was well under my target of 10 people per group and I was freaking out. After the email was finally sent out on Tuesday, I found an error in the dates I put on the email; I said that the research was being conducted on the 14th instead of the 16th.

As the woes kept piling up and Mrs. Haag was about to kill me, I still needed to find a way to collect participants. Throughout the day I had been texting my friends to see if their parents could volunteer and I had gotten a few responses, but on Tuesday night I began to hustle and turned it into overdrive. I had my mom text all of her friends and I texted and emailed many of my friends and teachers to see who I could get to participate in my research. Though there were a lot of failed attempts, we managed to get 14 people to sign up to participate in my research on Wednesday. For one days notice, I think we did pretty well. We hustled like Giannis here and managed to get a great turnout for my first day of experimentation.

I managed to get 13 people to volunteer for Friday and it was another successful day of experimentation. I currently have 36 participants total and I ideally need 40, but the more the better. So I need to continue to gather participants in order to ensure a great research project. If anyone would like to volunteer or knows somebody who would feel free to sign up using the link at the bottom of the post.

I still have plenty to do this upcoming week. I need to figure out how to analyze all the data I am collecting as well as review the pitfalls of my literature review and methods. I think this week was a crucial week for my project; I conquered the challenges of the week and hopefully through experience I have learned the skills needed to conquer the challenges that lie ahead. Thanks for reading to the end of the post. Here is another vicious dunk. (451)

Link to the sign up sheet for my experiment:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11l9Dp5SuR4oogyIKPof70aKVSmWapyMTDBZsSIIU8WY/edit#gid=0

We Made It

Hello All:


We finally made it! No more formal school ever and no more classes until college. Though it is an exciting time, it is also a little scary. All the responsibility of being productive now falls onto my shoulders. Mrs. Haag is still here to guide us but much of the burden of meeting deadlines and showing up on time to meetings is on us.

As we go off on our own, there are numerous pitfalls we can fall into that must be avoided during the third trimester as well as life after high school. I feel like the number one thing that will happen is that I will feel like I have so much time to do stuff that I keep putting it off and never get anything done. It's an easy trap to fall into and it will be detrimental to the progress and quality of my research project. Sometimes too much time is the enemy of productivity. Not that there isn't time for chilling and relaxing, but after research is done is the best time for that.

In order to ensure that I do not fall into a rut of laziness, I am going to try and fill my days with productive work by making a schedule. With a set weekly schedule, which will include breaks and time to relax, I feel like I can continue to be productive throughout the third trimester. The schedule will be flexible and change week to week depending on what's going on, but I feel like a schedule for myself will be a good way to combat incessant laziness and "Netflixing." I've also been setting reminders in my phones for important deadlines and meeting, so I do not forget to show up or hand something in.

This week I finally confirmed my research times and reserved a room at BASIS for my research. My research will be implemented on February 8th, 10th, 15th, and 16th at BASIS Scottsdale. Now we need to finalize and send out the email to the parents in the coming days. Once I collect my raw data, I will need to implement a more strict schedule for myself to analyze the data and write the paper. Until then, I can't really do anything without the data and I already have the times set up to perform the experiment. I feel like I'm making good progress towards finishing my data collection, even though I haven;t actually begun the data collection. My experiment involves a lot of logistical planning, so getting that done was a step in the right direction. (433)

Just Keep Swimming

Hello All:

Only one more week until us Seniors our out of school! This is exciting news but it is also a little scary. In less than a week, we will be done with formal High School classes and will be cast out into the world on our own. As the end comes closer, I am still trying to figure out my plans for the third trimester and finalize my experiment dates. There is still so much to do and not a lot of time; it's got me feeling a little like this.

The last time I posted, I was still worried about scheduling the dates for the experiment and gathering participants. Since then, I have emailed Mr. Garvey and confirmed the availability of a room for my research. This upcoming week, I am going to meet with Mrs. Haag and finalize the dates based on what works best for us both. Once I have the dates finalized, then I can begin gathering participants.

This week, Kristiana, Ved, and I are also working on a draft of an email that will be sent out to the BASIS Scottsdale parents. The email will detail our research and ask for participants in our studies. Hopefully, in the next week, the email can be sent out and we can begin gathering participants. Before the email can be sent, all the dates must be finalized, so that is an important step for me to take soon. Overall, I feel pretty good about how my research implementation is going and I feel like I'm still on schedule for successful experimentation in February. I feel a little like baby Dory.

Along with beginning to implement our methods, we have been editing our lit reviews and methods sections over the past week. As I have gone through my methods with my critique group and Mrs. Haag, I have realized some of the pitfalls that I need to sure up. In my methods, I never included a section on data analysis and specifically how I will use the riskiness survey that participants take to qualify my results. I will have to use statistics to analyze the data, so I want to look into how to do that effectively before I conduct my research. I was thinking I could possibly talk to Mr. Peacher about this, since he is the statistics teacher. What do you guys think of this idea or do you have any ideas on how I could analyze the data well? I'm excited to see that the research is moving along, but I need to keep the attitude of taking it one step at a time and completing one challenge at a time. Just as Dory always says, "Just keep swimming." (455)

Where I'm At

Hello All:

This past week we extensively reviewed our methods sections in groups, providing feedback and helping each other to improve. As I finish up the revised methods section, I must look forward to implementing them. I have currently not started my research, since it is an experiment that must be done during the third trimester, but I will start taking steps to gather my sample and arrange the logistics soon.

Just like DJ Khaled does in all aspects of his life, in this blog post I will try and outline the way I am going to stay on schedule and the key🔑  steps I need to take to ensure timely and correct implementation of my research.

In order for my research to happen, I need approximately 40-60 participants, so I must take steps to gather participants. I have already contacted Ms. Jordison and she has agreed to send out an email to BASIS Scottsdale parents, so I need to draft an email or statement about what participating in my project entails, so she can review it and send it. I also need to discuss the specific dates of the research with Mrs. Haag, since I cannot ask parents to volunteer until they know the specific dates that they could choose from to come in and participate in the research. Hopefully within the next week, I will figure out the dates with Mrs. Haag and begin gathering participants for my research.

Once I begin gathering participants, I may not immediately get the response that I need. So depending on how many participants that I have, I may need to begin reaching out to people I know and possibly teachers to participate in the research. It is important to have a backup plan for gathering participants, but in order to implement it, I must have time to gather people. That is why I need to begin gathering participants soon, so I know what I have to do leading up to the date of the experiment. Preparedness is a major 🔑 . I must give myself time to have a contingency plan for participants because my research relies on adequate participation, but the number of participants that agree is not fully in my control.

That is my currently where I am at in my research and what I am planning on doing to stay on track. Hopefully I will get the ball rolling soon and I can start finding results. As DJ Khaled says, "they don't want [me] to win." So I gotta win. (422)

New Year, New Me, New Post: Reflecting on My Methods

Hello All:

After a restful and Netflix-filled winter break, I am back to school and to blogging. Only a few more weeks and then us Seniors will be off on our own during the third trimester. As the saying goes, New Year, New Me(mes), so here's a preview of what 2017 has in store for you all.

In the spirit of New Years, this week's assignment is to reflect on our methods and identify ways to improve them. Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to have my paper read over and critiqued by my peers, so that should make this assignment a little easier and hopefully even more productive.

For anyone who does not know what my methods are, I will provide a quick summary. I am investigating how the effect of time pressure, near-misses, and priming influence blackjack behavior. So I designed an experiment that will have four groups play blackjack while under the influence of the different effects. Their behaviors will be observed and measured to help me find results. Hopefully that brief summary gives you a better understanding of my methods.

Overall, I feel that the design of my methods was fairly strong. However I often did a poor job explaining myself and got excessively wordy, especially through the use of passive voice. The key weaknesses that need to be addressed in my methods section are passive voice, lack of smooth and rigorous justifications, fixing unclear explanations, and unnecessary transitions.

Throughout my paper, passive voice obscures the meaning of my sentences. Often times, the sentences became overly wordy and emphasized the wrong aspects. I often used passive structures in my justifications, which made them extremely long-winded and hard to follow. If I can fix the passive voice issues throughout my paper, my methods section will become clearer and easier to follow.

Along with passive voice problems, many of my justifications were unclear. This was often due to the roundabout way that I wrote them very roundaboutly. The previous sentence was a perfect example of  the overt repetition I used when I could have just said it briefly and directly. Throughout my methods, I often found that I could explain it well orally but I did not translate my own understanding into the paper.

Similarly, I found that my explanations of my actual methods were often times unclear as well. When I tried to explain the risk survey that I would be using, I ended up confusing many of my group members. This is because I did not provide the full context around the survey. I think it was also difficult to explain my methods chronologically because I have not done them yet.

Building off of that, I had awkward transitions between the different sections of my paper and tried to justify the order that I was doing the groups in, even though since they are all separate it is unnecessary. I used wordy and often-times clunky phrases to try and transition between my subtopics when concise methods would have sufficed. Hopefully after my edits, my methods will be as strong as this guy. (516)

Timeline

Hello All:

We just turned in our proposals, so now it is time to move on to creating a plan of action for my research. Since I am performing an experiment, I will not be able to actually get started on my data collection until February. But that does not mean that January will be a month of sitting around and doing nothing for me; I will have to prepare all the logistics of my experiment as well as learn how to analyze my data, so I can quickly write up the results section after I collect my data in February.

In terms of a timeline for the actual experiment, I am currently in the process of coordinating the use of rooms at BASIS Scottsdale for my experiment with Ms. Jordison. She has already given me a tentative agreement for use of rooms, but now we just need to finalize all of the details. Throughout January, I will also be making sure that I have enough participants. I am going to recruit BASIS Scottsdale parents to participate. Depending on how many I initially get, I might need to recruit more adults. I will go about doing this by asking people who I or my parents know from various sources, then I will ask people to reach out to people they know. Hopefully, I can get enough BASIS Scottsdale parents to participate in my experiment, but I will need about 50-60 participants, so if I do not get that many participants, I will still have January to gather more participants for my experiment.

Besides preparing the experiment, I will also need to learn how to analyze the results. I will need to research how to understand data better by cross referencing surveys. I am going to have people of different ages, genders, and incomes, so I need to learn how to analyze data from people of different demographics and compare them. I will also need to learn about how to write up experimental data and analyze it.

By late February, I should be done with the experiment and data collection, so then I will start to write up my results. My results and conclusions sections should take me to the end of March. I will need to implement what I learned in January and cross reference my data with the survey results in order to compare the relative influence of the effects. (401)

Elevator Pitch Video

Hello All:

Here is my video. I hope you enjoy it and want to invest in my research.

Initial Feelings on My Methods

Hello All:

Over the course of the past week or so, I have completed my methods assignment and gotten a much clearer vision for the direction of my research and methods. To remind anyone who is not familiar with my research, I am looking into the comparative influence of time pressure, near-misses, and priming on blackjack betting behavior.

My research presents a few challenges that I have to solve with my methods. First, I need to find participants for my study. The participants must be adults and there must be a lot of them, so I can split them into four groups (one for each effect and one for the control) and still have enough members of each group to yield meaningful results. I am a little nervous about that, but I am sure that if I start contacting potential subjects soon I can find people willing to participate.

Once I have the subjects, I need to make sure that their predispositions and biases do not affect my results and make them invalid, so I will have to survey them to understand their predispositions in regard to gambling history and riskiness. I have found a survey that has been researched thoroughly and shown to work, so I am thinking of sending it out to my subjects electronically and having them answer it before they come in to participate. Then, I can split them into groups that are representative of the population I am testing. Thus yielding more meaningful and valid results.

Once I get the subjects into my experiment, I need to find a way to standardize a measurement in order to judge the influences of each effect comparatively. I plan to do this by putting my subjects in the same situation; I will present them with an ambiguous hand of 15, which is shown to have no common betting practices and then measure how many times subjects hit or stay under each condition. I will also observe my subjects in order to gain a full perspective on the data. This standardized measure will allow me to compare the effects concretely. I will set up the situation by stacking the cards when the player is out of the room.

For each of the effects I need to vary the procedure slightly differently. I plan to have the dealer give the player a verbal three-second time limit for betting during the time pressure situation. To test the near-miss effect, I plan to set the cards up so the player should have one or two near misses prior to facing the ambiguous hand. I plan to prime the participant by showing them the number 6, which is needed to get 21, through pictures and quiet music and sounds throughout the experiment. I am a little nervous about the priming because I have to find the perfect balance of being discreet and being noticeable enough for the priming to work.

Overall my general experimental set up has me feeling pretty good. Like this confident baby.

But some of the logistical planning it is going to take has me feeling more like this baby.

I am a little nervous about trying to keep my subjects separate to avoid potential confounding variables of social interaction while gambling, which is a whole other study that needs to be done. I am also nervous about scheduling the experiments at times that work for me, my subjects, any volunteers I may need to help me, and the place that I will be doing the experiment in (ideally BASIS). Hopefully, I will get all the logistics figured out soon and it will all run smoothly. Then, I will be like this baby. (613)

Reflecting on the First Trimester

Hello All:

I'm back from my long hiatus. It has been a crazy year so far and my research has come along way. When I initially cam into AP research, I was pretty set on studying behavioral economics, specifically price anchoring. As I read more into price anchoring, I was still very fascinated with it, but I also found that research on the topic was saturated and there was not a lot for me to contribute to the field. Also, as I read into behavioral economics journals, I became more interested in time pressure, social factors, and subconscious factors that influence behavior.

Through all of my reading, I eventually came to the topic of gambling and behavioral influences of gambling. Although it is a lot different from my initial idea, I feel like I found an area that I can contribute to and am extremely interested in. After that, I had to start the lit review process and it left me looking a little like this.

At the start of the lit review, I was very lost on how to structure my argument. But as I read more, I began to realize that I had to explain all of the effects and relate them together. But that was not an easy task. The biggest problem I had with my lit review was my trouble putting my subtopics in conversation and justifying that the effects I chose were the most important to look at.

But through conversation with Mrs. Haag and my peer-review group, Kimy and Brian, I figured it all out. I had to create a new framework and add in more psychological elements in order to justify the effects that I used. 

Now that the lit review is done, I am excited to move on to the methods. I am currently thinking of using an observational study to understand the effects. I will need four groups: a control group and a group for each effect. I am a little nervous about trying to get a wide sample and a lot of people to participate in my study because without a wide variety of people, my results will not be meaningful. Hopefully, I can start reaching out to potential participants soon. As I read my literature, I will get a better sense of the specifics of my methods and create an experiment that will yield meaningful results.

Here is a meme to for reading the whole post. (417)

Good Kanye, Bad Kanye, and Eh Kanye

Hello All:
This week we are supposed to write about one thing we feel really good about, one thing we feel neutral about, and one thing we fell anxious/scared about relating to our research.

When I think about my experiment with blackjack, I feel like this

I feel like I have thought through it well and that I have at least figured out how to put my participants in the same setting and isolate my variables. I plan to have each participant be faced with an ambiguous decision on whether to hit or stay (so he/she will probably have a hand of 14 or 15), so I can measure how many times they hit and stay when I change my variable. Since the only thing I am changing is the effect I'm using to influence them, I can attribute any change in hit/stay rate to the variable (as long as I account for risk-averseness, but I will talk about that later in the post). 

When I think about putting my subtopics in conversation, I fee1 like this

The problem I'm facing is that the main gap in my research is that my subtopics (the effects I'm looking at) are not really looked at together or in conversation. I think I know how to put them in conversation; I plan to discuss how they show similar behaviors and how they might relate to each other. But I am still a little unsure about it. I'm not feeling bad or good about this part of my research. I'm sure I can get it done, but I'm definitely not jumping out of my seat eagerly to do it.

When I think about refining my scope and trying to standardize risk-averseness I feel like this

The problem I am facing is that in order to get any meaningful results, I need to make sure my participants are close to equally risky people, meaning that they are all equally prone to taking or not taking risk. This is important because if I do not account for it, I could have one group that is very risky and another that is very risk-averse (not risky), which would screw up my data. I might think that the effect I was testing with the risky group was more influential even if it was not. In order to account for this, I have been looking into researched risk-assessment tests. Some work, so I might give the test to each of my participants and measure it that way. But my other problem is that I need to find an age group of people who have the same level of risk (and that level of risk is medium). For the most effective risk mitigation, I would ideally use adults between the ages of 30 and 40 because they are not that risky and not too conservative yet as well (according to a study I'm looking into that is true). But my problem is that I do not know 60 people (that is about how many I will need) in that age group who will participate in the study. So I am trying to find the balance between a feasible scope for my experiment and as much risk mitigation as possible. So that is what I currently do not feel great about but hopefully I will figure it out soon and change to this Kanye. (563)

Research Question

Hello All:
It has been a busy week in AP research. We turned in our Annotated Bibliographies, so now we are shifting our focus to the literature review. Specifically this week, the blog posts will focus on our research question, so here is mine.

How do the effects of priming, time pressure, and near-misses compare in their ability to influence isolated individuals' behavior while playing blackjack?

Here is the justification for every part of my research question.
First things first (I'm the realest), I have to address any definitions I will need to provide, and there are quite a few in here. In my literature review, I will define priming, time pressure, and near-miss effects. Here are the definitions for all those terms.

Priming: Priming effects occur when people subconsciously perceive information through various stimuli and then base their actions on the information without even knowing they are doing it.
This definition is taken from a combination of Radel et al. and Bahrami et al., whose credibility I justify in my annotated bib.

Time Pressure: Time pressure effects occur when people are forced to make a decision within a short amount of time.
This definition is taken from a combination of Dhar and Nowlis and Young et al., whose credibility is also established in the annotated bib.

Near-Miss: Near miss effects occur when players think they were close to winning (e.g. they were one number off or had 2/3 of the correct symbols on a slot machine) and/or getting good at a purely chance game even though they were just as far from winning as if they had been 10 numbers off (because the odds are all the same).
This definition is taken from a combination of Luke Clark and Mark Dixon, whose credibility is also justified in my annotated bib.

Now that I have defined my terms, I will move onto discussing my scope. I narrowed my scope down to blackjack because it is the most manageable casino game for me to look at; all I need is a deck of cards and a room (and obviously participants) to look at blackjack. I feel that my scope is still manageable with all three effects because I just will need to come in three different days and do my experiments, which is not a big deal. I think that all three factors are important to look at since they all exist together and looking at two without the third is just ignoring an important piece of the puzzle. I also specifically say isolated because I am looking at them alone, rather than in groups, which is a whole separate area, since social behavior then kicks in.

The one major assumption I make is that the effects I bring up do affect gambling behavior. My literature review will prove that they do, so by the time I get to my question, it will be proven and not an assumption.

My independent variables are each of the effects and my dependent variable for all three experiments is the gambler's behavior. Building off that, I plan to put the subjects in the same situation during a blackjack game (so I will set up the deck how I want it and instruct the dealer how to deal) and change the condition of the subject depending on what I am testing that time. I will have 4 trials with a different of randomly selected participants to participate in each one. I will of course have a control group, who I vary nothing for. In my priming group, I plan to subliminally prime them a number (for example 6 if they were shown 15) and see whether their rate of hitting on 15 changes. For time pressure, I will give them five or ten seconds to decide and see how they react. For near-misses, I plan to have them play a few close games with the dealer and feel like they are getting good, and then see what they do when faced with the same situation as the other groups. My methods section will go into depth about my experimental design, but right now that is how I plan to investigate the question.

Finally, I think my research question fills a gap since currently these three effects are looked at in a vacuum and not compared to each other, so by putting the effects in conversation, I am filling the current gap in the research on them. Also, my research has real-world applications and significance, since the casino industry brings in billions of dollars each year and is growing (according to Kenneth Peak). So by looking at the ways people behave while gambling, I am helping to generalize gambling behaviors and helping to start the conversation about what influences people to gamble and how we can stop people from becoming gambling addicts and wasting their money away. Even though I am looking at individual behaviors, the gambling industry starts with each individual's behavior and betting, so my research therefore has a larger significance within the gambling industry.

Thanks for reading my post. Unfortunately there will be no memes today. (856)