AGRO 896 – Applied Field Research: Design, Data Management, Analysis and Reporting

Instructor: Dr. Blaine Johnson and Dr. Amanda Easterly

Number of Credit Hours: 2

Description: AGRO 896, Field Research: Design, Analysis, and Reporting (AGRO-896 Independent Study) is a two-hour credit course, offered over eight weeks. The course is an introduction to balanced and unbalanced experimental designs, as used in field crop research, and the use of mixed model methodologies for analysis and summarization of data. AGRO 896: Field Research is designed to provide graduate students with working and practical understanding of current statistical methodologies used for purposes of designing agricultural field experiments, data management and organization, and for the subsequent analysis, summarization, and reporting of data generated in such experiments.

• How do I design a field experiment that doesn't seem to fit traditional textbook experimental designs?
• How do I evaluate plant materials over a broad range of environments despite insufficient resources to plant all entries at all evaluation locations?
• How do I analyze data that are unbalanced with the lack of balance being either planned or unplanned?
• How do I predict the expected future value for entries or treatments in agricultural research experiments, as opposed to merely reporting what was observed using means and other descriptive statistics?
• How do I manage and prepare data for analysis using data management software other than spreadsheets?
• How do large seed companies manage, analyze, and summarize large data sets when entries number in the hundreds or even thousands?

Available software options (i.e. ASReml, Enchidna, MS Access, R, etc.) are introduced. Software are downloaded, installed, and used for analysis of field generated data. Output files are used to create the summary tables and reports needed to address the questions that motivated the experiments.

Prerequisites: Minimum 1 semester of statistics (e.g. STAT 801 or equivalent) is a firm requirement. This course is not intended to be a replacement or substitute for STAT 801.

Course Requirements & Materials:

• Technical Requirements: PC or laptop/notebook, high-speed Internet access, Windows software package. All materials will be available via Canvas. Installation, testing, and validating the needed computing software are course activities, and done under the direction of the course instructors.

This Course is Ideal For…

• Graduate students interested in learning more about field research