week 1
Antionette80
Untitleddocument27.pdf
As part of your registration for this course, NCU provides access to the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Take time to ensure your access to SPSS so that you can troubleshoot problems now. If you have difficulty accessing SPSS, contact the NCU IT support desk ([email protected]). Once you access SPSS, any questions should be addressed to your instructor.
In this assignment, you will become reacquainted with SPSS, review some of the basic statistics used in the previous statistics course, and enhance APA format when presenting statistical results. Be sure to revisit the resource, Discussing Statistics In-Text, in the Academic Success Center’s Statistics Resources (see link in this week’s resources).
The small dataset in Table 1 is the same as the data file, confidencescores.sav, available from this week’s resources. These data are from a study conducted within a single middle school. The following small data set is from a study conducted within a single middle school. Fundamentally, the researcher wants to determine if a relationship exists between number of Years of Experience and Confidence Scores. To go a step further, the researcher wants to examine if Years of Experience could be used as a predictor of Confidence Scores.
Note: The data set also includes Sex, which will be used for the Week 2 assignment. Although it is not a variable of interest in this Week 1 assignment, you can still examine the data for data entry errors and generate descriptives.
This data analysis starts by examining the data for errors, or said another way, ensuring that there are no special circumstances with the data that could lead to confusing or misleading results. Specifically, the data used for analysis are equal to the data collected.
Table 1
Sex, Years of Experience, and Confidence Scores
Sex
Years of Experience
Confidence Scores
Male
15
110
Male
3
117
Female
12
118
Male
8
120
Female
23
104
Female
9
100
Male
37
107
Male
14
115
Male
10
114
Female
4
115
Female
11
115
Male
1
100
Female
3
117
Female
7
115
Male
2
103
Female
21
125
Male
28
115
Female
9
115
Male
5
110
Female
3
110
Open the SPSS file confidence scores available in this week’s resources or type into SPSS the data from Table 2. Remember, the data are the same in both places
Next, follow these steps to examine the data for accuracy:
Identify the level of measurement of each of the three variables. Identify the dependent and independent variable based on the information given in the description of what the researcher wants to know. Use SPSS to conduct the necessary descriptive statistics on each of the variables based on their level of measurement (e.g., frequency distribution, mean, median, mode, standard deviation, standard error, boxplots, etc. Hint: Not all of the three variables require the same descriptive procedures). After examining the data with descriptive statistics, did you find any issues with the data? If your answer was yes, what procedures will you do as a researcher to make sure that the data in SPSS are the same as the data collected in the original spreadsheet? (Hint: You don’t need any calculations to do this.) Once you have addressed the issues with the SPSS dataset, please repeat the necessary descriptive statistics on each of the variables based on their level of measurement (e.g., frequency distribution, mean, median, mode, standard deviation, standard error, boxplots, etc. Hint: Not all of the three variables require the same descriptive procedures.).
Length: Complete responses to all six questions and prompts. Please include the question prompts along with your responses in your assignment submission. In addition to a WORD (.doc) file with the answers to the assignment questions, also include the output (.spv) file. (NOTE: SPSS automatically generates the .spv file as you work in SPSS. When you close your SPSS main window, SPSS will ask you if you want to save the output file.
