**What research design are you using to answer your question?** For our final project, we will utilize the experimental design. This is due to the fact that our testing methods include field experiments, where the participants will be tested in real world conditions. **How will you control for confounding variables?** We will be able to control for confounding variables by using the same participants throughout the experiment. We will also be comparing the data of each participant against their own between the different running surfaces. This will allow us to observe any differences between each individual’s cadence on the varying surfaces, as our ultimate goal is to find the relationship between cadence and running surface. Treating each participant as an isolated “experiment” will allow us to achieve this goal. **What are your criteria for inclusion and exclusion of subjects?** Due to the current status of Covid-19, we tried to include only ourselves, the researchers, as subjects. This was decided due to the fact that it reduces the total number of people coming together from various places and will allow for the maintenance of social distancing. On top of this, all participants should have no recent (< 2 weeks) history of any musculoskeletal pains and should feel comfortable running for about 20 seconds at full effort. As each participant’s results will be compared against their own, there are no physical requirements to be included in this study. However, two of our researcher didn't fulfill our history of musculoskeletal pains criteria, therefore we have recruited two other subjects for our experiment. How are you going to obtain your subjects? By consulting within our own team, we decided to recruit two subjects from our class to limit any unnecessary social exposure. **How are you going to collect your data and monitor the quality of your data?** We will be collecting data through our smartphones utilizing the MATLAB Mobile app. On top of this, we will be maintaining a consistent collection location of the sensor on the L5 area of each subject. This location has been agreed to be the most adequate for our experiment. The smartphone will be placed in a running strap, screen facing away from the body. To ensure data quality we will be monitoring the location of the smartphone after each trial to ensure no unnecessary movement occured. On top of this, we will be using MATLAB software on the computer for further data analysis. **What is your timetable? Schedule.** The following timetable has been agreed upon by the team such that all necessary tasks will be completed in a timely manner. 10/28 - Design experiment 10/30 - Recruit participants 11/7 - Finalize data collection 11/12 - 50% of data processing complete 11/19 - Finalize data processing 11/26 - Finalize data analysis 11/30 - Final Presentation **Who will be doing what? Personnel.** - Participants Each group member will be a participant in data collection and will be assigned their own data for processing. - Experimental Design During the initial brainstorming sessions, the group members collaborated in the design of the experiment (repeated measure study). Each subsequent group meeting, we were able to modify how the experiment would be run until the final protocols were set. - Process Data Individual group members will collect their own assigned data from the trials using the Matlab mobile application and computer software. Once the individual data is collected, each member will process their data before the group combines all data together. - Analyze Data The group members will work together to analyze all of the collected data. This provides each group member the opportunity to express their interpretation of the results. From this, the group can make final conclusions about the proposed hypothesis and whether to accept or reject the findings.