5.1: Data Collection

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Between September 9, 2019 and October 9, 2019, a six-person PIL Team collected empirical data from 16 student focus groups and 37 telephone interviews with faculty at eight U.S. colleges and universities. Institutions in the sample were selected for regional diversity, students’ demographic variation, and whether they were located in red or blue states, given the 2016 definition of these voting categories; both a R1 university and a community college were included in the sample (Figure 3 and Table 2).

An email invitation was sent to a randomly selected sample of full-time students on each campus asking them to participate in an hour-long focus group. Two focus groups were held on each campus. A $20 gift card was offered to all participants who attended all or part of the student focus group. An email invitation was also sent to faculty to participate in a 25- to 30-minute telephone interview. At schools with a sizeable number of teaching faculty, a random sample was used.

Table 2: Institutional sample
College or University	Location	Type	Focus Groups	Faculty Interviews
California State University Maritime Academy	Vallejo, CA	Public	10	2
Clark University	Worcester, MA	Private	15	8
Corban University	Salem, OR	Private	16	3
Emporia State University	Emporia, KS	Public	12	5
Grinnell College	Grinnell, IA	Private	17	5
Keene State College	Keene, NH	Public	14	4
Oregon State University	Corvallis, OR	Public	8	7
Ozarks Technical Community College	Springfield, MO	Public	11	3

References

These scripts are available on the “PIL algorithm project” landing page at https://www.projectinfolit.org/algo_study.html

Contributors and Attributions

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