BASC0003 Quantitative Methods
Final Assessment
The Task
Define and explore a research question of your choice in a topic that is related to one of your pathway modules and investigate this question, using quantitative methods from this module as a basis. Present your investigation and its conclusions through a short oral presentation and a written report.
Weighting
The Final Assessment makes up 50% of the marks for the Quantitative Methods module. The other 50% is covered by the pieces of coursework that were completed earlier in the module.
Note that all marks are for the written report; the oral presentation is purely formative and has no mark weighting. See below for further details.
Deadlines
Oral Presentation: To take place in tutorial classes in the weeks starting 11 March & 18 March
Written Report: Hand in via Moodle by Tuesday 23 Apr, 17:00
Late submission of the Written Report will be subject to the standard penalties, according to UCL regulations
Oral Presentation
The oral presentation will consist of a four minute presentation given in one of the final two tutorial sessions, accompanied by Powerpoint slides or similar. The audience for this presentation is your peers, the other students taking the module, and the level of the presentation should be pitched accordingly.
In this presentation you will:
· Set out and explain the research question you will try to answer.
· Set it in its wider context, drawing on relevant sources in the area you have chosen to provide motivation for the question. Why is this a problem/question that is worth tackling? Has anyone done anything similar before, perhaps in a different context?
· Clearly set out the quantitative methods that you will use. Why are the methods that you have chosen appropriate for tackling your question? What form. will your results take and how will you present them? What possible outcomes might you envisage and what conclusions would follow?
· Highlight any problems that you might face and possible strategies for overcoming them.
· Use visual aids (i.e. slides) to communicate your investigation, including graphs/charts/tables where possible.
· Respond to questions from your tutor and from other students (time permitting).
Your presentation slides must be submitted to your tutor before your presentation.
Presentations should be strictly restricted to 4 minutes, not including time for audience questions. If you overrun, your presentation will be halted.
The oral presentation has no mark weighting as part of the module. However, it is an important part of the project overall. Its purpose is to allow you to gain experience in communicating quantitative ideas and to gain feedback from your seminar tutor and your fellow students.
Written Report (50%)
Length
The maximum length of the text is 1700 words, excluding graphs, tables, equations, other figures and code extracts. Footnotes are included in the word limit. In addition, the work as a whole must not exceed 6 sides of A4, with a minimum font size of 10. The word count must be stated on the first page.
The only exception to the above is the list of references, which may be presented separately on a seventh page (and which is not counted in the word limit). References should be presented using the Harvard style. system (see Moodle for details). References to Wikipedia will not be counted.
Penalties for exceeding the word or page limit will be in line with UCL regulations.
Assessment
The assessment criteria are those that have been made available via Moodle and distributed in class. You will receive a mark out of 10 for each of the five streams, giving a total mark out of 50.
Reports will be marked anonymously, so your name should not appear anywhere on your written work or in the file name (Moodle keeps track of the identity of those who submit each essay).
Content
Your Written Report should follow the structure for quantitative writing set out in the lectures. Some additional guidance on certain aspects is given below:
Introduction This should briefly introduce the key concepts and context of your investigation, beginning to justify the importance and relevance of your work.
Research Question Your research question must be something that admits a quantitative (rather than qualitative) analysis and must be related to one of your pathway modules. It should be contextualised with a brief discussion of relevant sources. As seen in the mark scheme, credit is given for ambitious and interesting research questions whose answers may be of genuine value, so consider justifying your choice of question on this basis. After defining your question, consider setting out some more specific research objectives and hypotheses.
Literature Review Here, you will discuss relevant sources to more firmly establish the context of your work. You should take a critical approach to the sources you read, considering how reliable they are and whether they are written from particular points of view. It should be clear how your reading has informed your approach to your question. The best literature reviews will consider at least one academic source (academic books or research articles), rather than focussing only on news articles and websites.
Presentation of Data If your work uses any data, you should include a section presenting the data as discussed in the lectures. This will involve an explanation of what the data represents, summary statistics, and some form. of visualisation (e.g. scatter plots or box plots).
Methodology Your methodology must demonstrate an understanding of quantitative techniques and their value. Consider which of the methods from the module would be most appropriate to deploy in the investigation of your particular question. Methods not covered in the module may also be deployed, provided that they are clearly explained, with references provided. As seen in the mark scheme, credit is given for the application of more varied and sophisticated techniques, so be sure to choose an approach that allows you to demonstrate the true extent of your understanding.
Results Consider the way in which you present your results carefully. The goal should be clarity of communication. In some circumstances, a table of values may be perfectly adequate. In other circumstances, a graph or diagram may be more appropriate.
Discussion When discussing your results, you should demonstrate your understanding of the quantitative methods that you have employed and your ability to clearly interpret any output that you have observed. Avoid summarising information that has already been clearly presented by means of a table or graph and concentrate on highlighting key facts and interpreting outcomes in terms of your research objectives.
Conclusions Your conclusion must relate back to your research question (even if your results are inconclusive) and must be based on all of the information that you have gained and the interpretations that you have outlined in the previous sections.
Audience
Your work should be clear and comprehensible for an audience with a level of quantitative understanding equivalent to that of the other students taking this module. You should therefore assume a detailed knowledge of the methods covered in the module, but the purpose and concepts of any techniques drawn from outside the module must be briefly explained.
Additional Guidance
Your first point of contact for further guidance about the report should be your seminar tutor. You should contact them to discuss any concerns you may have about your report and your progress.
Academic Practice
Submissions are run through Turnitin software and checked for plagiarism. Punishments for plagiarism (following UCL procedures) can be extremely serious, potentially including disqualification from modules and courses. See the UCL guidelines for details.
Artificial Intelligence may not be used to generate text for inclusion this assignment and is not required to produce a good submission. The only acceptable uses of AI are: a) general brainstorming of ideas; and b) checking the spelling/grammar of text that you have written independently.
Submission
Submission is exclusively via Moodle. Work should be submitted in Word or PDF format.