Research Project Instructions
Instructions
Students will read a scholarly journal article and a non-scholarly article about a specific topic that will be provided in the course. Items to consider when reading the articles include noting the issue, methodology, and results.
Students will choose two groups of people (15 each, 30 total) and collect data by requesting 30 people to complete a questionnaire provided in the course. Fifteen of the questionnaires must be completed by men and 15 of the questionnaires must be completed by women.
Students must enter the data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that is provided in the course, and then analyze the data. Students will read the data set instructions that are located in the course for additional details about what statistical procedures to conduct. Tables and graphs must be copied and integrated into a Word doc in final submission. Excel file must also be submitted.
Students will develop an APA formatted, written report that contains the following sections:
• Introduction: Briefly summarize the concept (approximately 300 words)
o Refer to the scholarly peer-reviewed article and the non-scholarly article to discuss the concept.
• Methodology: Briefly describe the following with regard to data collection (make a separate heading for each subheading below):
o Participants
Discuss any important demographic information such as age of participants etc.
o Materials
Describe the questionnaire—number of items and the response set (i.e. the Likert scale options)
o Procedure
Describe how the data was collected –how did you find participants and ask them to participate
• Results: Briefly summarize the statistical findings from the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and address the questions in the data set instructions about the data. This section will include a frequency polygon and content from the textbook as students answer questions about the results. Tables and graphs from Excel Spreadsheet must be integrated into the results section of this paper. Students will also assume normality and apply an independent t-test to analyze if the difference between two groups is statistically significant. Refer to the data set instructions for guidelines on what to include in the results section.
• Discussion: Briefly summarize the interpretation of the findings (i.e. what do the findings mean in relation to the concept) (approximately 300 words)
• APA Format: Include APA references for at least 3 sources (two provided resources and one additional resource) used in this report (i.e. journal article, non-scholarly or peer-reviewed article, or textbook). In-text citations need to be appropriately used and correct.
I’ve completed the 30 questionnaires. The answer to the questionnaire is attached. I’m unsure how to calculate and plot the information requested on the graphs.
Please be as honest and accurate as you can throughout. Try not to let your response to one statement influence your responses to other statements. There are no “correct” or “incorrect” answers. Answer according to your own feelings, rather than how you think “most people” would answer and circle the response that best represents your own feelings.
Circle the response that best describes you:
Age: under 21 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 60+
Gender: M F
Please use the following response set to answer the items below:
1= Strongly Disagree
2= Somewhat Disagree
3=Neither Agree or Disagree
4=Somewhat Agree
5= Strongly Agree
1. In uncertain times, I usually expect the best. 1 2 3 4 5
2. Things rarely go wrong for me. 1 2 3 4 5
3. I’m always optimistic about my future. 1 2 3 4 5
4. I expect things to go my way. 1 2 3 4 5
5. I count on good things happening to me. 1 2 3 4 5
6. Overall, I expect more good things to happen
to me than bad. 1 2 3 4 5
THANK YOU FOR COMPLETING THIS QUESTIONNAIRE.
This questionnaire has been edited. The original questionnaire The Life Orientation Test-Revised was retrieved from: http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/ccarver/sclLOT-R.html
Instructions for Data Analysis and Writing of the Results Section
I. Data Set Instructions:
a. Click on the link for the Optimism data set and add your data to this data set by entering the 15 women participants’ data in the rows at the end of the women’s data and entering the 15 men participants’ data in the rows at the end of the men’s data. Therefore, you should have a total of 15 rows of data for women and 15 rows of data for men.
b. Conduct the following analyses on the data and discuss the results by answering the questions below in the results section of your paper (i.e. be sure to write in paragraph form for this section).
c. Analyses:
i. Calculate a Sum for each person in the study. This should result in a column at the end of the data that is a sum of all the scores in that row. The higher the sum, the more optimistic the person is. Sums = 30 is the highest level of optimism.
ii. Calculate a Mean, Median, Mode, and Standard Deviation for this Sum column for both men and women. This will tell you how optimistic women and men were as a group in the study. The higher the mean the higher the optimism. This should automatically populate.
iii. Create two polygons– one for the data for men and one for women and determine if the distributions are normal or skewed. If the polygon chart does not automatically populate you will have to manually type in your frequency.
iv. Look at the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation and describe how these measures of central tendency indicates whether the distribution of men and women are normal or skewed. That is, is the distribution of men and women normal or skewed? How does the mean, median, and mode scores indicate if the distribution is normal or skewed?
v. Look at the table of raw data for both men and women. Explain why the raw numbers indicate the distribution is normal or skewed. If the distributions are normal how would the scores have to change to yield a skewed distribution? If the distributions how would the scores have to change to yield a normal distribution.
vi. Include textbook content to assist with your answers above and be sure to include proper citation of the textbook in your results section. The textbook could be used as your third additional resource.
II. P Value and Optimism Study:
a. After all your data is in you will see your p-value for your independent t-test populate. Remember this independent t-test is used to analyze if the difference between two groups is statistically significant. This test is based off of the 15 females and 15 males. If you have trouble seeing the p-value populate you can always put in the formula into excel: =ttest(array 1, array 2, 2, 3). Note that for the array you would have to highlight the data values from the female and male category. This is a two-tail test and note that we are assuming normality. In your analysis you will state your null and alternative hypothesis and the decision based off of the p-value that was provided in the cell. We are testing this at a level of significance of 0.05.
