My group and I are currently in the process of choosing and refining a research question for the semester project at hand. We have met and bounced a variety of ideas around, but are having trouble on exactly which idea to go with. The main problem with our ideas at this point in time is whether or not the data that we collect will be quantifiable. In addition, we recognize that it is essential to be able to identify a causal mechanism, a feat which is not as easy as it sounds. One possible topic we have considered is exploring which room in barracks is the most comfortable and ideal to live in. In order to maintain constants throughout the study, we would only study rooms on one stoop, and we would only study rooms that have 4 occupants living in them. In addition, we would be using a survey technique, by utilizing ordinal variables, questioning our subjects on their level of satisfaction based on an ordinal scale. Apart from the rooms, we are considering the possibility of exploring which company at VMI posts the best guard mount scores. One of our group members has access to these scores, and they would be used as our dependent variable. The group’s independent variable would be the individual companies observed. For our hypothesis, we would explore the idea that the amount of time that a company spends training its rats on drill and ceremony during cadre time is the effective causal mechanism that correlates to the guard mount scores for that company.