05-436 / 05-836 / 08-534 / 08-734 / 19-534 / 19-734 Usable Privacy and Security

Homework 3

Print your homework out and submit it in person at the start of class (3:00pm) on Monday, February 13. Homework will not be accepted after 3:00pm on that day.

Part 1 (50 points): Homework 2 asked you to think about a research area related to usable privacy and security and briefly describe 5 studies you might do in that area. Now think about a specific research question or hypothesis you want to test in this area that you can investigate by asking a few survey questions on Mechanical Turk. This week you are going to conduct a short (less than 5-minute) 30-participant MTurk survey related to this research area.

You may do this in a group of 1 to 3 people. If you work in a group, pick just one of the research areas from the group members' homework 2 responses to focus on. (If none of the research areas are conducive to an MTurk survey, you may pick a new area.) You may all work together to design and implement a single study on MTurk. However, you should each analyze the raw data separately and should each write up this assignment on your own.

You should turn in the following things:

  1. Clear statement of your research question and/or hypothesis in a single sentence
  2. One paragraph summarizing major decisions you made and things you kept in mind when designing your survey
  3. Text you used to recruit participants
  4. Your screening criteria (e.g., "95% approval rating on MTurk"), if any
  5. how much you paid participants
  6. How you implemented your survey (directly in MTurk, on Survey Monkey with a completion code, etc.)
  7. The survey

Because this is for a class assignment and is not considered "research," you do not need to get IRB approval or include the CMU consent form. You should still treat your participants ethically and pay them fairly for their time. You will need to spend your own money on this, but we don't anticipate this should cost you very much money, especially if you work in a group and split the cost.

Part 2 (50 points): Working by yourself, present the results of your study. Write at most one page describing the results, which should include at least one visual element (e.g., a graph, a figure, or a table). Note that you should not include the raw data itself in your submission. Instead, your results section should provide highlights and aggregate information, as in the papers you have read this semester.

Part 3 (9-unit students should not do this part. 12-unit students will receive between 0 and 30 points for this part): Write a 3--7 sentence summary and short "highlight" for one optional reading assigned for the February 8 class and one optional reading assigned for the February 13 class.