(Also available in CODAP)
🔗The Issue
People report being more and more stressed every day - and that the amount of work they are expected to complete in a day is increasing. This trend extends beyond adults, with children and teenagers also reporting increased stress levels.
🔗Phases of the Project
1. Ask questions
We will investigate questions about ourselves:
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What factors affect my stress level?
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What is my typical stress level?
We will investigate questions about our class:
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What factors affect our class stress level?
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What is the typical stress level of our class?
We will do some comparing:
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How does my stress level compare to that of my class?
And finally, we will examine the relationship between stress level and personality type:
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Do differences in personality type result in different stress levels for people?
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Do personalilty assessments tell us useful things about a person’s personality?
2. Consider Data
Given that we are analyzing two different types of data - stress data and personality data - there are two phases of data collection.
First, you will complete the Personality Colors Assessment. This should take 5-10 minutes. After answering a series of multiple choice questions, your "personality color" will be revealed to you - blue, green, orange, or gold. Take a moment to read about your personality type, and then learn about the other personality types. Which personalitly type do you think will experience the most stress? Make a note of your result.
Next, we will develop a plan to collect data on stress in our lives:
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First, take a look at the "Stress or Chill? Daily Survey. In this project, we want to examine classwide data. You MUST use the designated class survey link that your teacher provides. If you use the wrong survey link, your data will not be included in our class dataset.
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For the next 5 days (including a weekend) each student in our class will record three entries per day on our class stress survey - ideally once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening.
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If you are unable to access the stress survey during a designated time, jot down any observations on paper or make a mental note. (See the survey, above, to understand what you’ll be looking for.) As soon as you are able, submit the survey.
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When possible, take a photo of what you are doing at each time slot. Save any photographic evidence for possible inclusion in your final report.
3. Analyze the Data
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After five days of data collection, your teacher will share with you a file of class data. (Some teachers may share Pyret files, while other teachers may share spreadsheets for students to upload to Pyret.)
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Explore the data! What displays can help us to answer our questions?
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Save interesting displays for inclusion in your final report.
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Don’t forget to consider numerical methods of analysis (mean, median, etc).
4. Interpret the Data
Write a report to address the research questions listed above. In your report, be sure to:
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Provide the plot(s) and numerical summary (or summaries).
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Describe what the plot shows.
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Explain why you chose to make that particular plot.
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Explain how the plot and numerical summary answer your statistical questions.
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Explain conclusions you made from your analysis.
(Based on the What Stresses Us? project from IDS at UCLA)
These materials were developed partly through support of the National Science Foundation, (awards 1042210, 1535276, 1648684, 1738598, 2031479, and 1501927). 
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