Fictitious Statistical Research

Activity 8

Section 6: Signature Assignment

The Signature Assignment and reflective essay should:

(a) demonstrate mastery of the course material, and

(b) apply statistical data knowledge to the real world.

Required Reading:

Please refer to each Activity for required readings.

Assignment 8 Paper � Fictitious Statistical Study

The Signature Assignment for this course provides an opportunity for you to apply your skills and creativity to a self-designed fictitious study that employs statistical methodology with computational, analytical and interpretive skills. Students will develop a fictitious problem and data set that utilizes specific statistics to analyze the data. The goal of this project is to allow students to demonstrate your cumulative knowledge, and to operationalize your learning in a scholarly manner.

Assignment Preparation

Review all course reading and resource as applicable.

Reporting Statistics in APA Style website.

Main Task: Create and Analyze a Self-designed Fictitious Study

For this activity, students will undertake an analysis based on a self-designed fictitious study that utilizes statistical methodologies. Develop a fictitious problem to examine - it can be anything. For example, maybe you want to look at whether scores on a standardized college placement test (such as the SAT) are related to the level of income a person makes 10 years after college; or, whether those who participate in a Leadership Training program rated as better managers compared to those who do not; or, whether ones political affiliation is related to gender. These are just a few examples; be creative and think about what piques your interest. Also, address a problem that you may want to look at in future research for a thesis or dissertation. Please use either EXCEL or SPSS to conduct this analysis.

The analysis report should include the following components:

(1) Describe your research study.

(2) State a hypothesis.

(3) List and explain the variables you would collect in this study. There must be a minimum of three variables and two must meet the assumptions for a correlational analysis.

(4) Create a fictitious data set that you will analyze. The data should have a minimum of 30 cases, but not more than 50 cases.

(5) Conduct a descriptive data analysis that includes the following:

a) measure of central tendency

b) measure of dispersion

c) one graph or more

(6) Briefly interpret the descriptive data analysis.

(7) Conduct the appropriate statistical test that will answer your hypothesis. It must be a statistical test covered in this course such as regression analysis, single t-test, independent t-test, cross-tabulations, Chi-square, or One-Way ANOVA. Explain your justification for using the test based on the type of data and the level of measurement that the data lends to for the statistical analysis.

(8) Report and interpret your findings. Use APA style and include a statement about whether you reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis.

(9) Copy and paste your Excel or SPSS data output and place it in an appendix.

Remember, the goal of this project is to show what has been learned in the course. Therefore, this project becomes a cumulative learning project and an opportunity to demonstrate the acquired content learned through all the previous assignments, readings and video presentations.

Length: 10-12 pages

Your paper should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the ideas and concepts that are presented and provide new thoughts and insights relating directly to this topic. Your response should reflect scholarly writing and current APA standards. Review APA Form and Style.

Be sure to adhere to Northcentral University's Academic Integrity Policy. Review NCU's Academic Integrity Tutorial to refresh your knowledge of how to achieve academic integrity.

Submit your document in the Course Work area below the Activity screen.

Learning Outcomes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11