field study project presentation and reflection

Your presentation should provide as complete a picture as possible of 1) what you did and 2) what you found out, and what that means for the problem you are researching.

Introduction—

• It’s always a good idea to start a presentation by setting up your audience’s expectations, telling them what they will learn from your presentation.
• Briefly explain your overall research project and say what you did for your field study. Maybe explain why you chose to do this and/or what you hoped to learn.

Methods—

• Explain how you collected your data—who you interviewed (name and title or how people are connected to your research question) and how you interviewed them, maybe how long the interviews were; or, who you surveyed, what program you used, where you posted (or distributed) it, how many results you got; or, describe where and how you looked for new information to deepen your project.

Findings—

• This is where you present the key information or data you collected.
• For interviews, use a combination of summary and direct quotes to convey the parts of the interviews most relevant to your research. It’s a good idea to use direct quotes for the most important bits—and put them on a slide with the person’s name so your audience has a chance to soak them up.
• For surveys, you might summarize the general findings. Then present details in a graph or table, being sure to title the graph and label parts so that the audience can really grasp what you learned. Explain your graph or chart orally. Note, you probably DO NOT want to present the average responses your survey program will generate, because those do not show the correlations. An example of a correlation from a past project is that out of 42 respondents who classified themselves as lower income, 33 of them (79%) said they eat fast food 6 or more times per week. Percentages are a helpful way to help present the data to your audience too.
• For other types of projects, present the information you learned as clearly and concisely as possible.

Conclusions and Implications—

• This is where you want to tell the audience what you actually learned from your field study and what that means for the problem you’re researching. Again, you want to put the most important parts on slides so your audience can really see it clearly.
• Think about what patterns and trends are evident in your data.
• How does what you learned connect with what you learned through earlier secondary research (does it support that research, contradict it, add new information?).
• If any of your findings were unexpected or contradicted your secondary research, try to explain why you think this might be.
• In closing, state how your field study project moved your project as a whole forward.

Evaluation of the Field Study Presentation will be based on these criteria:

• includes all 4 parts listed above
• clearly, thoroughly, and accurately represents the project you did
• slides are professional, visually interesting, not too crowded
• delivery is practiced; you refer to slides without reading them; you make eye contact and don’t just look at your notes
• most important of all, you personally engage the audience—connect with their interests!