Editing Advanced Computational Communication Methods (Summer 2023) (section)

== Final Project ==

The final project can take one of two forms: either an explainer of a computational method or a research project.

=== Explainer ===

For the explainer, you will create a polished explainer of one of the topics covered in class. This should include an explanation of the topic/method, with a focus on how and why the topic is useful for doing social science research, as well as its limitations. You should also include an explanation of how to use the associated method, probably using public data.

Ideally, this explainer will fill a gap in the resources that already exist about a topic. One gap that often exists is resources specifically designed for communication scholars or social scientists more broadly. Or, resources to help more novice programmers, etc.

The format of this explainer is up to you, but it will likely at least include a Jupyter Notebook (or similar); I think that a video walkthrough of a notebook is also nice, but I'm open to other options.

=== Research Project ===

The other option for a final project is to push forward one of your quantitative research projects that would benefit from one or more computational methods. ''I strongly urge you'' to work on a project that will further your academic career outside of the class. There are many ways that this can happen. Some obvious options are to prepare a project that you can submit for publication, that you can use as pilot analysis that you can report in a grant or thesis proposal, and/or that fulfills a degree requirement. I prefer that you do projects on your own but it may be possible to work as a small team (maximum 3 people). Team projects are expected to be more ambitious than individual projects. 

==== Planning Document ====

If you would like to take this option, you will submit a 2-4 page planning document of what you would like to do within the first few weeks of class, just to make sure we are on the same page about the scope of what you want to accomplish and so that I can give some initial feedback.

The project planning document is a basic shell/outline of an empirical quantitative research paper. The planning document should focus around three big questions:
* Why are you planning to do this analysis? Make sure to introduce any background information about the topic, the community, your business, or anything else that will be required to properly contextualize your study.
* How will you get the data to analyze? Describe the data sources will you collect and how they will be collected.
* How will you analyze the data? Describe the visualizations, tables, or statistical tests that you will produce.

One approach that I have found helpful is outlined [[CommunityData:Planning document|on this wiki page]].

==== Project report ====

Final projects will likely look different, depending on the stage of the project when beginning the class. Typically, you will write a document or a Jupyter Notebook that will ideally provide the foundation for a high quality short research paper that you might revise and submit for publication. I do not expect the report to be ready for publication, but it should contain polished drafts of all the necessary components of a scholarly quantitative empirical research study. In terms of the structure, please see the page on the [[structure of a quantitative empirical research paper]].

The great thing about a Jupyter Notebook is that it allows you to provide data, code, and any documentation sufficient to enable the replication of all analysis and visualizations. If you choose to write the report as a Word document, then you will need to include the code in a separate file.

Because the emphasis in this class is on methods and because I'm not an expert in each of your fields, I'm happy to assume that your paper, proposal, or thesis chapter has already established the relevance and significance of your study and has a comprehensive literature review, well-grounded conceptual approach, and compelling reason why this research is important. As a result, you do not need to focus on these elements of the work in your written submission. Instead, feel free to start with a brief summary of the purpose and importance of this research followed by an introduction of your research questions or hypotheses. If you provide more detail, that's fine, but I won't give you detailed feedback on these parts and they will not figure prominently in my assessment of the work.

Jupyter Notebooks do not have all of the tools for citations that Word or LaTeX or even Google Docs have, so while I expect you to cite related work your references section does not need to be as polished as citation management software would make it.