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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.
g g g g g g g g g 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.
g g g g g g g g g g 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 gave an excellent
visual analysis of the relationship between the variables in the research.
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g g g g g g g g g 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.
g g g g g g g g g g 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.
