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After reading through the study, there were two notable strengths:
1. The data analysis–including Y-intercept–are present, with the SPSS
formatting of APA done well.
2. The author did a good job identifying limitations of the study that
could have been impactful.
aa aa a aa aa a aa aa a aa aa The relevance of the articles discussed was clear, but causal
language was used in the last paragraph when the author mentions that
spirituality improves mental health; if he was referring to a study there was no
clear reference. A few issues that could be improved upon are as follows:
1. In the running head, there is singular language (woman’s) and plural
language (their). While the American Psychological Association (2020)
encourages singular “they” when gender is in question (Section 4.18),
here it does not appear to be, so the correction would be to change
“a woman’s” to “women’s”.
2. While the author does a great job formatting SPSS data in APA
format, that application to the word processor could use some
improvement, with large chunks of white space. It seems shrinking
the tables slightly may be enough to get them on the same page as
their headings; title case should also be used for table titles as per
Section 7.9 (American Psychological Association, 2020).
3. The author expresses the understanding that the results are non-
significant, but in the Results section, says that the null hypothesis is
not.
• After going through your study on the correlation between spirituality and
loneliness, the result and discussion sections are well written and
checked many of the assignment requirement boxes. You start by stating
the hypothesis of the study, which gives the reader a good idea of the
purpose of the study. You commenced the result section by stating the
attributes of the sample population while presenting the frequency
statistics without including the tables as per the instructions. You rightly
noted the missing demographic characteristics in the data, which pointed
to weakness in the data.
aa aa a aa aa a aa aa a aa aa a The simple linear regression model in the hypothesis
testing section was used, which is prefer to correlation analysis. The
linear regression model provides more information than the correlation. I
also appreciate that you correctly formatted the table using the APA
guidelines and named them appropriately. Your use of a scatter plot
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gave an excellent visual analysis of the relationship between the
variables in the research.
aa aa a aa aa a aa aa a aa aa Your interpretation of regression output was also correct,
which indicated that spirituality was an insignificant predictor of
loneliness with a p-value of 0.423. I also agree with your R2
interpretation, where you indicate that spirituality accounted for a 3.16%
percentage in the variability of loneliness. However, I think your
interpretation of the relationship between the variables might be
misplaced. For instance, you state, “The correlation between lower levels
of loneliness and higher levels of spirituality is 0.190.” I this this is
misleading since there is a positive correlation between loneliness and
spirituality. Therefore, higher levels of spirituality predicted higher levels
of loneliness.
aa aa a aa aa a aa aa a aa aa a In the result section, you correctly mentioned the aim of
the study and its findings which gave the reader a summary of the
study. You further revisited the weakness in the data, noting that
convenience sampling resulted in a biased and non-representative sample.
You also cited three previous studies on the study topic, noting that
they contradicted your research findings. You finally highlighted the
importance of studying the relationship between the study variables when
recommending a similar study that surpassed the weaknesses of your
study. I appreciate the fact that your research was well conducted and
explained.
References
American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American
Psychological Association 2020: The official guide to APA style (7th ed.).
American Psychological Association.
