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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.
q q q q q q q q q q 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.
q q q q q q q q q q q 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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q q q q q q q q q q 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.
q q q q q q q q q q q 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.
