Forming my Research Experiement

So this semester I'm working on a couple of research projects, and part of the assignment is to keep a journal on how things go as we work on it.  Honestly, I should have started this thing a month ago, but that's in the past now.  I'll be posting blogs about each part of my research, from the formation of it as an idea, to submission and (hopefully) presentation of this research at conference.  This particular post is about how my research idea came to me.

In September we started my research course and were told to pick our topics.  Originally, I wanted to try to do a study to see if late night programs, such as midnight basketball, would lower the rates of alcohol consumption on campus.  But when I thought about everything that would have to go into that (staff for the basketball game, organizing teams, gathering before and after alcohol consumption data), I thought that I might want to pick an easier subject.

At the time, I was also working on a completely different research project, testing game theory in college students.  In the process of organizing this study, I found out that part of my population of psychology courses was a learning community, which raised the concern that because of the high levels of interaction that these students experiences, they would have responses that might influence my results.  Also, I had to decide if I wanted to this group to complete the experiment in groups of three or as individuals (the concern being that their interactions would lead to tainted results).

To solve this problem I decided that I needed to poll the students to see how much they had bonded.  It seemed the only way around this problem that I was facing.  Once I started thinking about it, however, I realized that there was probably a lot this question of peer bonding in learning communities than what my game theory research needed to know.

I emailed my teacher, Prof. Remmiw, and told her that I wanted to change my topic, and explained to her that my clear direction and question that I wanted to answer in doing this research.  She sent me an email back saying that she really liked my idea and that she thought that I had a much clearer focus for this research idea.  And with that, I had my topic.  I  had taken the first (and most important) step down in the long trail ahead of me.