Project Planing Research Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to have you develop a plan for a research study that will demonstrate a new measurement technique. As you do this, you will continue to think critically about how to measure health-related behaviors.

The assignment consists of two parts.

Part 1:

Based on the readings and our class discussions, in two pages or less of main body text (plus additional pages for references as needed), discuss the potential strengths and the weaknesses of using microinteractions for measurement of behavior. In particular, you should cover the following topics:

• The common problems with existing measures across various domains
• A brief description of how a microinteraction system might work (understandable by someone who has not taken the class); include the possibility of using basic prompting but also sensor-driven prompting
• Opportunities for improving measurement made possible by a microinteraction system
• Delineation of the barriers to adoption of microinteraction measurement by the research community

Be sure to cite the readings as appropriate, and in particular use some of the course readings to support your assessment of what the challenges and opportunities may be with behavioral measurement broadly. Back up what you say. Be as specific as you can be about the opportunities and the barriers.

Use single-spaced, 11 point Ariel or Times New Roman font with 1 inch margins. Include references properly cited using a numbered format (e.g., [3]). The references cited pages do not count toward the two page limit. If you reference any papers not already in Mendeley and the class Dropbox, add them.

Part 2:

Develop a one page proposal for an experiment that could be conducted that could start to convince researchers of the value of microinteraction for measurement. You may assume the following:

• Whatever programming was necessary to get your experiment to run could and would be done.
• You have access to 40 Pebble watches for an indefinite period of time to be used as needed.
• The people you recruit will have Android mobile phones compatible with the Pebble.

Given these resources, be clear about what you would propose to test, why, how, with whom, and for how long. Your work on Part 1 should help you narrow your focus. What type of result, in what type of measurement domain(s), is likely to be most convincing for skeptical researchers and get them to pay attention to this new approach. What would you expect to demonstrate? Be specific: if your experiment is successful, how would the results help move the field of behavioral measurement forward. Make sure to include information about the type or types of behaviors that would be measured, or used for the test, as well. You don't need to have mock-ups of questions, but you should indicate what the styles of questions would need to be and ensure that the Pebble app design we are building will be appropriate (if not, indicate any missing components).

Send an em ail with both parts of the assignment to ...@neu.edu. Name the file in this format: [your last name].research3.pdf.