Start with the decision
A broad topic is a useful beginning. A feasible project needs a more precise question, observable variables, accessible evidence, and a way to evaluate the answer.
Six prompts
- Question: What do you want to know, in one sentence?
- Evidence: What data or literature can you actually access?
- Unit: What does one observation represent?
- Method: What analysis can that evidence support?
- Comparison: What baseline or alternative makes the result informative?
- Boundary: What conclusion would go beyond the evidence?
Check the fit
A dataset containing employee characteristics and turnover labels, for example, may support a predictive modeling question. By itself, it does not show that adopting AI caused a change in employee retention.
The same distinction applies widely: building a prediction tool and estimating the effect of using that tool are different research tasks.
Download the canvas and write a first version before choosing a more complicated model.
A standalone resource by Ackley Will. About the author · Share a question or observation