About the Issues Research Lab

Issues Research Lab

Fall 2012

About the Issues Research Lab

The Issues Research Lab (Lab) is a partnership of the Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences (the Koshland) and the Hispanic College Fund (HCF). The lab is intended to help Hispanic Youth Institute (HYI) participants consider an issue of importance to their community and develop recommended actions related to that issue based on evidence they collect. Lab participants will learn how to make decisions based on evidence, and to apply that skill to issues of importance in their lives.

In 2012, the issue of focus will be the effects of food marketing on nutrition. Participants in the Greater Washington HYI this summer selected that topic for study.

You’ll have the chance this fall to make some friends, connect with old ones, and to learn about an exciting new topic. You’ll work hard, but get a lot out of this. You are expected to stick to the schedule outlined on the next page.

If you would like to receive community service credit for your participation in this program, please send me the form required by your school. At the end of the program, you’ll receive a certificate of participation that includes the number of hours of service.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at any time:

Jeanne Braha Troy

202.334.1841

Schedule

*Every student must post at least one new comment, or comment on other’s posts, on the Lab facebook page. You should offer ‘lessons learned’ from your group’s work, ask questions about challenges you face, or share ideas for your peers.

Research Group

Record the contact information for your research group members. You will be working together closely to develop your research plan, collect data, develop conclusions, and create recommendations.

Scientists and other professionals often collaborate on projects. Your work will model this practice.

Preferred Method of Comunication

Research Methods

1. Identify the Issue

2. Research the Issue

3. Create a Hypothesis

4. Experiment or investigate (test the hypothesis)

5. Draw Conclusions

This is a general overview – these steps are described in more detail in the following pages. You will work with your group to develop a plan that you will then implement together. Some people use slightly different terms for each of the steps above, but the general process is the same. The next several pages of this booklet give a lot more detail about each of these steps. If you want more examples and guidance, check out the links below.

Some good resources for developing a research plan:

 Your science book. Most textbooks start with a chapter or section on the scientific method. These tend to emphasize controlled experiments, but the general structure will also apply to social science research.

 http://undsci.berkeley.edu/: Understanding Science: How Science Works – an overview of the process of science, with some tips for scientists (like you!).

 National Student Research Center – Section II on this page has a nice overview of the scientific method.

 Choosing appropriate research methodologies and methods – this site is written for graduate students, but has some very useful information about qualitative research methods.

One: Identify the Issue

This step is where scientists discover an issue they want to investigate. This may be the result of observations of the world around them (“Wow, I always see that bird at the feeder on days that are really sunny. I wonder what’s going on…?” or “It seems like people take longer to get on and off the bus during the winter. I wonder why?”) or new questions that arise from previous research they are currently doing. Once the kernel of an idea is identified, more observation and background is needed to refine the question.

In our case, each of you shared photos or a log that showcased the issue of food marketing in your community, and shared them with the group. Take some time to peruse the photos and reflect on what you’ve observed.

Some questions to consider (add your own, too!):

• What are the common themes you see?
• Are there different media that that seem to be more problematic or have more food marketing?
• What sorts of foods are most commonly marketed?
• What patterns do you think you see?
• How do the trends or patterns you see seem to impact your life?

Two: Research the Issue

Research in this case means finding out what others have done previously to investigate this topic. You can do a literature review at the library. Professional scientists used peer-reviewed journals to share their work, so these are the primary sources for this step. However, scientists may also talk to others in their field to learn more about research in progress.

At the end of this booklet are some great websites with more information about the issue of food marketing and health. Peer-reviewed journals are very reliable sources of information, but can be rather heavy in specific jargon. Many also require subscriptions, though your school or public library may have access. These journals are considered so reliable because other scientists (the ‘peers’) review the work before it is published to ensure that it is credible. Also, research methodologies have to be explained, so they can be replicated by others and judged (by the reviewers and by readers) to be appropriate ways to answer the question being asked.

Remember, as you read through background material and take notes, to be sure to keep track of where you are finding information so you can cite the source in your final report or poster.

Use the space below to take notes on the expert information presented.

Three: Create a Hypothesis

(What will you investigate?)

Based on what you now know about food marketing and health, and what you have seen in your (and others’) community, what would you like to investigate? Your group should create a hypothesis, or testable explanation of a phenomenon. The hypothesis helps you think about what you want to test.

The purpose of a hypothesis is to connect the manipulated changes made by the independent variable with the effects on the measurements of the dependent variable.

Huh?!

First a few vocab words:

• Manipulated changes: these are the changes you make in the experiment
• Independent variable: this is the thing in the experiment that you are manipulating (changing on purpose)
• Dependent variable: this is the thing that you think will change in response to the manipulations of the independent variable.

For example, say you want to know what effect packaging has on consumption of snack foods. You could hypothesize that using trendy packaging will increase the amount of chips eaten by a teenager.

• Here the dependent variable is the amount of chip consumption (how many chips or bags?).
• The independent variable is the packaging on the chips.

Four: Test the Hypothesis:

Developing Your Research Plan

How will you investigate your research question? This step requires a lot of planning to ensure that you are developing a test or investigation that will actually get at the question you have posed. Please use the Koshland staff and mentors to help you figure this out. Your science teacher may also be a good resource.

Your research plan should note the following:

• Will you do a controlled experiment, an observation, a survey, or some other form of research? How did you pick that method?
• What potential variables do you need to control? If you’re not doing a controlled trial, how will you account for these variables?
• Who or what is in your sample?
• What is your sample size?

Using our example from above, that trendy packaging will increase a teenager’s consumption of chips….

Things we might want to control include things like:

• What else have you eaten that day?
• Make sure all the chips are the same in appearance and taste
• What else?

Sample size:

A sample is meant to represent a larger population. There is no need to conduct your study on every member of a population – that would be a census – but the group needs to be large enough to avoid any accidental biases. This is sometimes a matter of judgment, and is an issue of quality, not just quantity. It also depends on what you want to be able to say with your data – what that larger population is.

For example: You have probably heard a lot about polling for the presidential election. Assume the voting public is about 1,000,000 people. The surveys are generally of a few thousand people. But they are carefully distributed, so about half are men and half are women; there is a mix of racial/ethnic groups that matches the U.S. public; the mix of income levels matches; etc. So a lot of time is spent calling people, asking them about those characteristics, and then conducting the survey. The analysts can ‘kick out’ responses from people who don’t fit the necessary groups.

Say you want to construct a sample to represent your school: step 1 would be to find out about your school. Look on the website to see if there is demographic information about the student body (male/female, numbers per grade, what % are English Language Learners, or what % are on the Free and Reduced Meal program, or other relevant characteristics). Also think about your hypothesis. What might affect someone’s media or food consumption? Do you think (for example), that students in the marching band tend to have healthier diets in general? Or do members of the a/v club tend to watch a lot more t.v. than most other students? You’ll need to adjust to make sure you don’t over-represent those people and bias your sample.

Talk to Koshland staff or your mentor about the appropriate sample size for your project.

Controlled trials vs. Quasi-experimental methods:
It’s much easier to do a controlled trial when doing a study of non-humans. For example, to test the impact of a specific drug treatment (medication) on a human would be challenging, so most companies start their work on animals, such as mice. They even breed the mice to be nearly identical in their genetics, and keep them in nearly identical homes with identical diets.

Rather than trying to control variables for humans, it’s often easier to simply account for normal variation. For example, in last year’s study of the impact of sleep debt on grades, Lab participants simply surveyed a large number of students. They could group them by the amount of sleep they were getting, and consider that the independent variable. The answer to the question, “how are your grades?” (they were a little more precise than that!) was the dependent variable.

Four and a half: Doing the Research:

Developing a plan is a huge step. Now it’s time to do it! The most important thing is to DOCUMENT all of your work. So before you start, think about how and where you will store all the information you collect. Be honest – if you interview someone and get wacky results, make a little note that it seems odd, but keep track of it. Since each project will be different, Koshland staff or your mentor can help you set up a spreadsheet or other document to track all of your data.

If you are doing a survey, surveymonkey.com allows you to create a survey for free that can be sent to others via email. The results are put into a spreadsheet for you.

Sharing your work with your group:

• Dropbox.com is a free (you have to register) way to create a folder in the ‘cloud’ that is shared amongst a group. Jeanne can show you how to set it up.
• Googledocs is another way to share files remotely.

Both of these systems would allow you to have multiple group members enter data into one spot.

Five: Draw Conclusions

Now you have your evidence…….what can you say about it?

• Could you use your colleague’s evidence to strengthen your recommendations or argument?
• Are you positive?
• Can you say that x caused y?
• What other tests could you do to find out more?
• What areas of research remain?

Stay tuned – for now you should focus on creating and implementing an awesome research plan. Our workshop on November 5th will focus on what the data can tell you – you’ll receive a lot more information and assistance on this topic.

Six: Develop Recommendations

Developing recommendations is not part of the scientific method, but is an important part of using science to solve problems. This topic will also be covered on November 6th.

Seven: Present Your Findings

Your poster will be like a lab report: it will document the steps in the process that you took, and display your findings.

These posters will be displayed in the museum during the presentations, and you will be present to explain and answer questions about them. They should be clear, use proper grammar and spelling, include charts or other visual aids to demonstrate your findings, and properly cite all information sources.

A Powerpoint file will be uploaded to the group Facebook page that you can use as a template for your work. It will include sections for each step of the process:

1. Identify the Issue – share your initial investigations here. HINT: the Flickr site will be a great source of images for this section, as long as we have permission to use the photo from the person in it.

2. Research the Issue – Provide some review of the science of sleep and its effects. See the resource section below for some good references.

3. Create a Hypothesis

4. Experiment or investigate – this is generally the longest section. You should be very detailed about your methods.

5. Draw Conclusions

6. You should also add community recommendations based on your conclusions, if you feel you have sufficient evidence to do so.

If you do not have access to Powerpoint, you can make a poster by hand. If you can, please type your text into a word processing program and email it to Jeanne, or send the text in the body of an email.

Resources: Where to find information about food marketing and nutrition

National Academy of Sciences

The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council have written a few reports about food marketing. These tend to be written for technical audiences (such as other scientists and policymakers), but have fantastic information and very useful bibliographies. A few useful reports:

Institute of Medicine (2006) Food Marketing to Children and Youth. Committee on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth, J. Michael McGinnis, Jennifer Appleton Gootman, Vivica I. Kraak, Editors. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Download here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11514

Institute of Medicine (2011) Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Policies. Committee on Obesity Prevention Policies for Young Children; Leann L. Birch, Lynn Parker, and Annina Burns, Editors;

Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Download here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13124 – of particular interest is Chapter 5, “Marketing and Screen Time”

A short summary of this report can be found here: http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2011/%20Early-Childhood-Obesity-Prevention-Policies/Report-Brief.aspx

Institute of Medicine (2012) Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: solving the weight of the nation. Committee on Accelerating Pregress in Obesity Prevention, Food and Nutrition Board. Dan Glickman, Lynn Parker, Leslie J. Sim, Heather Del Valle Cook, and Emily Ann Miller, Editors. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press

Download here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13275

(with links to the poster about obesity prevention and the HBO series)