Protocols and pilot studies: Taking data collection projects seriously

Although there is consensus among statistics educators that student data collection projects are of substantial value, we feel that the planning and piloting phases of data collection are often neglected. We ask our students to write protocols or detailed plans for how the data will be collected, and to plan and conduct pilot studies before embarking on full scale data collections. We present examples and results from situations including college freshman introductory statistics courses, graduate statistics courses, and teacher training workshops.