Lab 1 Requirements How to Complete Lab 1 Laboratory #1- Statistics Research Statistics research is a key part of any successful business endeavor and understanding any market properly requires research. Many statistics are already available to the public to get a picture of the market. In this lab assignment, you will do some preliminary investigations of consumer markets. First, we will brainstorm a topic of investigation. AI use is permissible in this portion if students are feeling stuck, but must be documented as listed below. Think of a consumer market you may be interested in learning about. It may be helpful to choose a market that you have some familiarity with in order to make an educated hypothesis. Think about a market that you directly participate in or a market that you have noticed consumer behavior changes in your peers, parents, general society etc. Remember, these markets are broad and encompass a lot of smaller businesses. If you are thinking about an individual business or brand, consider what larger category of business they would belong to. For example, Southwest Airlines falls within the broader category of commercial air travel. Write down one key observation that you have made about the market based on your prior shopping experiences or things you have noticed in the consumer patterns of others. Expand and reflect upon these observations to form a research question you are curious about and are able to address with statistics. Form a clear question that you could form a hypothesis about. From your prior observations, make assumptions about your research question that would help you to form a prediction on what you expect to see in the trends for the market. For example, do you expect it to be a growing market or declining one? Is there a certain global geographic region that has the highest amount of consumer usage? Is there a certain demographic (gender, age, income etc.) of the consumer population that you would expect to be well represented in the market? How much revenue do you expect to see in the market? Use these observations and reflections to form a clear hypothesis about what you expect to see in the market. StatistaLinks to an external site. Begin by scrolling over the "insights" tab at the top. Begin by clicking on the appropriate category (consumer, digital, or mobility) and then find the market category that best addresses the market you decided upon. You may find that you will alter your approach as you go (don't worry, that's fine!). Keep searching until you find data that addresses your hypothesis statement. You may have to look at other insights like consumer or company specific insights. Be sure to write down a few notes about how you conducted your research process for your report at the end. A thorough discussion of search terms or the process you used to find your data sets will be required for your Methods and Materials section of the lab report. Once you have gathered the relevant statistics, interpret the data (especially any trends in the data) so that you can address your hypothesis statement. Your data should either support or disprove your hypothesis. If you can only partially support the hypothesis, but don't have enough data to fully support it, note that in your discussion of your results. Be sure to download any graphical images using the download arrow located on the right hand side of the image. You will need to insert these images directly into your report with a citation for the image as well. After following the instructions above, write a laboratory report. Please include each section below as a distinct section of your lab report with a header. Refer to the document "How to Write Laboratory Reports" for guidance on the format, content, and writing style. Introduction and Hypothesis For this portion of the report, use the in-class brainstorming exercise described above. Introduce the reader to the market you chose and why you chose it. Then discuss the observations you made about the market and the research question that came from those observations. Explain any assumptions you made about your topic/market/observations/research questions that helped you to arrive at an hypothesis. End the paragraph with a clear statement of hypothesis. Remember that a hypothesis is a predictive and quantifiable (meaning it is measurable) statement of expectation between variables. Experiment or Methods & Materials This is pretty simple and straightforward, but it does require a small amount of detail about what you did. For this portion of the report, briefly describe the process you went through to collect the data in full sentences and paragraphs (a brief paragraph will do). Remember, someone should be able to replicate your process of investigation based on your description of what you actually did. Results and Interpretation Download any relevant graphs or charts and insert them directly into your lab report Results section. Once you have your data downloaded and put into your lab report document, do a brief interpretation of what the data tells you. What does the data imply? Are there any notable trends that relate to your hypothesis? Is there any demographic data? Provide a few sentences to summarize the most important ideas that the reader should take from the data sets. These summaries should support any conclusive statements you make later on. For example, if I look at Online Food Delivery market (under digital markets) I see a rapid upward trend in revenue beginning at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, which is easily explained by altered social behavior required by lockdowns. However, the trend in revenue has continued to increase at the same rate over the years 2020-2022, and not at the rate prior to 2020, which indicates that there has been a shift in consumer behavior to adopt online food delivery as a normal part of every day life, and not an anomaly that only occurred due to pandemic necessity. Online Food DeliveryLinks to an external site. For this portion of the report, display the data tables/graphs from Statista in the report directly as images (please no screenshots) and label each chart as a figure (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2 etc.). Then provide some written interpretation of the data under each graph that helps the reader understand how the data should be interpreted and used to address the hypothesis statement. Be sure to provide citations for the source of data under each chart/graph (and don't forget your full reference list at the end of the report as well). Conclusion Once you have displayed and discussed the data, revisit your hypothesis statement in your writing. Use your interpretation of the data to support or disprove your hypothesis. Make a declaration as to whether or not the hypothesis was somewhat, mostly, or completely supported by the data and explain why. Discuss your initial research questions and then address how your understanding changed by performing this lab. For this portion of the report, provide a brief paragraph addressing all the items above. Discussion (Future Studies) Supply some future research questions based on anything related to this lab. Think carefully about what you learned and what you don't fully understand yet. Reflect on what data you were able to find and the data that you didn't yet find that would help you answer your overall research question. Or suggest a new research question on the subject area that you haven't investigated or don't understand yet. What else is there to find out? What are you curious about understanding on a deeper level? For this portion of the report, provide one paragraph of writing discussing potential future studies or a future research project on your subject. Submission Details The lab report should have a word count of 300-500 words along with supporting data images/graphs. In-text citations should be provided throughout the body of the document with a properly formed reference page in APA format. Be sure to cite any and all information that comes from your sources, whether that is written or graphs/charts. Submissions will be run through Turn It In for a plagiarism check. Be sure to paraphrase any verbiage that comes from a source. AI documentation: For those students who used AI to brainstorm, a copy of the chat interactions with AI must be supplied as an appendix to your document and cited in the writing and reference page as per APA standards. If students used AI to revise (not generate) their writing, a rough copy of the writing BEFORE AI was applied to it must be submitted along with the final draft.
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