assignment 3

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Statistics and Research Methods Review

To read the relevant research and write your paper, you will need to refresh your memory, vis-a-vis your knowledge of basic statistics and research methods. To this end, below is a review that will be useful. Given that a statistics and a research method class was a prerequisite for this class, it will be assumed you have some understanding of these concepts. To write an acceptable proposal, you will need to spend several hours reviewing this content.

Review Sheet

Statistics:

Levels of Measurement – Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, and Ratio Definitions (Understand what those definitions mean) Appropriate Significance Test for each level

Measures of Central Tendency – Mean, Median, Mode Definitions (Understand what those definitions mean) Advantages/Disadvantages of each one

How to calculate Measures of Variability – Variance, Standard Deviation, Range Definitions (Understand what those definitions mean) How to calculate (you won’t be asked to calculate variance and standard deviation from scratch, but if you are given one, you should know what the other one is.) Logic of Hypothesis Testing Directional vs. non-directional hypotheses and one- vs. two-tailed tests

Types of Error Power (definition; implications for hypothesis testing; relationship with sample size)

Correlation Positive, Negative, and Zero Relationships Assumptions/Conditions under which correlation is appropriate Correlation and Causality Statistical Analyses – t tests (one sample, independent samples, paired samples), regression, correlation, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Chi square

Assumptions/Conditions under which these tests are appropriate How to make conclusions based on these analyses

Research Methods: Induction vs. deduction Qualitative vs. quantitative data Recognizing the independent and dependent variables in a study Different types of Sampling

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Types of Research (read a scenario and identify which type of research is used: e.g., content analysis, ethnographic research, experiment, survey) and their purposes, strengths and weaknesses Reliability and Validity

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Assignment 3: Method Section

Due date: July 6, 1 p.m. Value: 150 points Save and upload your file to Canvas (Assignment 3).

• The sections of your method section are already outlined for you (see below), you just have to fill

them out with the information relevant to your study. Although the outline below is written as bullet points, your write-up for this assignment must be written in paragraph form (see the method section of any study as an example).

• There is no page limit for this assignment: Some of you have only a couple of variables, others have

more. As soon as you are done addressing all of the segments below, you are done! • Note that there will not be pre-reads available for this assignment (this policy is nonnegotiable), but I

would be happy to answer any questions you have.

General Writing Guidelines:

• Because it is a proposal of a future research activity, the method section must be written in future tense.

• The writing should be direct and precise: Avoid run-on sentences and/or descriptions of unimportant details. Once all the elements of the method section are written down during the initial draft, in your subsequent drafts you should focus on how to present those elements as clearly and logically as possible.

• In general, all of the descriptions within the subsections should be organized chronologically: For example, your variables in the instrumentation section should be organized in the order they will appear in your survey or experiment. Also, do not forget about the causal order: If you study the effects of persuasive messages on some measured variable, this variable measure should appear after the participants received the message.

General APA Guidelines:

• This paper must follow APA style:

• Typeface: Times New Roman

• 12 point font

• 1" margin on all four sides

• Double-spacing throughout. Do not add additional lines or spaced between titles, headings or quotes.

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• Number your pages in the upper right hand comer, using the header command. All pages contain numbers, even the title page.

• Indent the first line of every paragraph.

• Do not use contractions (e.g. I’m, don’t, etc.).

• A paragraph consists of at least 3 sentences.

• General APA guidelines for reference page:

• Your reference page goes after your text before the Appendixes and contains the word "References" centered at the top.

• Only sources to which you refer within your paper are included in the reference page. For this class, you will not use a bibliography, which is a list of sources contacted but ideas not used.

• List your references alphabetically.

• Indent the second and subsequent lines of each reference. This is a hanging indent.

• References are double-spaced, arranged alphabetically by author's last name.

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Follow the outline below to complete Assignment 3:

Insert a short description of your study here to remind me of the general purpose of your

project. (Note that if you decide to use the APA style, 5th edition, the headings below are

formatted to be in the proper APA style.)

Method

Participants

This section describes the sampling and demographic information for your proposal.

Judging the external validity (i.e., whom the study results may be generalized to) of a study

involving human participants requires that sampling procedures be described and descriptive

data be provided regarding the basic demographic profile of the sample population.

This section should include the following (recall that in your method section the bullet

points below have to be written as paragraphs):

• Description of sampling procedures:

o What type of sampling are you going to use? Briefly describe (All that

prep work for the research methods segment of your quiz should benefit

you here).

o How are you going to recruit your participants?

§ Are there specific locations/geographical areas that you are going

to target?

§ Note that your study should be realistic: Avoid proposing research

that might be costly, which is usually the case with random

nationwide samples.

• Description of the demographic information that you will obtain.

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o Commonly used demographic information includes:

§ Total number of participants required. This information should be

tied to your study design. In other words, if you are proposing a

simple 2 x 2 experiment, there is no need to have 1000 people in

your study. Recall that you only need about 25-30 participants per

condition.

§ Gender

§ Age

§ Race/Ethnicity

§ Study-specific demographics: Are there any additional

demographic variables relevant to your study? For example, if you

study superior-subordinate communication, you might be

interested in the years of work experience that your participants

have.

o What statistics are you going to provide as the descriptives for your

demographics? For example, to describe participants’ age, it is common to

provide the age mean, standard deviation, and range.

Design and Procedures

Select the type of study that applies to your research proposal and follow directions

below (Important: You need to select only one type of study):

Observational and ethnographic research. How, where, and when you will observe the

participants? What are your observation rules?

Surveys, questionnaires, or interviews. List the step-by-step procedures for your data

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collection starting with “the participant will be invited into the experimental lab” or “the

participants will be contacted via phone,” etc. This segment should include the study materials

and variables listed in chronological order: For example, “first, participants will answer a few

demographic questions; then participants will be asked to complete a questionnaire measuring

their level of issue involvement.”

Field/lab/quasi-experiment. Start with providing your study design, which should list all

of the independent variables with their appropriate levels. For example, if you are proposing a

quasi-experiment (i.e., one or more of your independent variables is measured, NOT manipulated

or induced), the following statement might be used to describe your design:

A 2 (Culture: Chinese vs. American) × 2 (Anger: low vs. high) independent group quasi-

experimental design was employed.

In addition, (a) describe your independent variables; (b) describe how the participants

will be assigned to experimental conditions; (c) describe your experimental procedures (use the

same approach as described in “Surveys, Questionnaires, or Interviews” section; see above).

Content analysis. Describe the categories that will be analyzed, provide definitions,

explanations of coding units and coding criteria. Describe the procedures for training coders, and

checking coder-reliability.

Study Materials

Will you be asking your participants to watch a video or to listen to an audio recording or

read a text (e.g., a persuasive message)? If yes, these materials have to be described here:

• If you are developing a short (no longer than one page) persuasive message, you can

include it in this segment. All longer materials have to be attached in the Appendix.

• If you are using an existing message/video or audio materials, these materials have to

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be cited.

• If you are using these materials as a part of your experimental manipulation, clearly

provide which experimental group gets which message or video. You can organize

your text in the following manner:

In the anger condition, participants will read: Insert the anger-condition message

here.

In the control conditions, participants will read: Insert the control-condition message

here.

If you do not have any study materials, skip this section entirely.

Instrumentation

This segment describes in detail the variables that will be measured in your study. List

those variables in chronological order by variable name.

Variable name (e.g., Relational satisfaction). Use the following guidelines to describe

each of your variables:

• How is the variable measured?

• An effort should be made to find a validated measure that has been published.

Make sure that you provide appropriate citations.

• How many items comprise the measure? If there are only three or four items,

provide those here. If there are more than five items, attach your measure in the

Appendix.

• On what scale is each item measured?

• What descriptive statistics are you going to provide? It is customary to provide

measures of central tendency, variability, and reliability, but you need to specify

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which ones you are going to use: For example, the mean, median, and mode are

commonly used measures of central tendency, but in socio-scientific research, it is

more common to provide the mean because as compared to the median and mode,

the mean tends to vary less across different samples.

Proposed Analytic Strategy

What statistical analyses are you going to use to test your hypotheses? Briefly explain.

When thinking about the appropriate analyses, remember that your analyses largely depend on

the type of variables you have. For example, if your IVs are dichotomous variables, you cannot

run a regression to test your hypotheses.