Assignment:
Scenarios
1. As an international development researcher, you would like to know African Citizen's perceptions about current levels of democracy. Your working hypothesis is that a series of reforms have increased African views of the level of democracy today. You do not have a good research design to compare attitudes before and after the reforms, but know that leaders and development experts would like to see a value of 6, on the scale of 1-10. Using the data from the 2015 Afrobarometer, determine whether perceptions about current levels of democracy statistically differ from a value of 6. Please provide: a 1-2 APA style paragraph statement that furnishes an answer to this question, note the relevant statistics, comment on meaningfulness and include your relevant SPSS output.
2. As an international development researcher, you have already tested whether perceptions about the current levels of democracy differ from a value of 6. Given recent social change movements in North Africa, you now want to determine whether there is a statistical difference in these perceptions between North Africa and Southern Africa. Using the data from the 2015 Afrobarometer, please provide: a 1 to 2 APA style paragraph statement that furnishes an answer to this question, note the relevant statistics, comment on meaningfulness, and include your relevant SPSS output.
3. As an educational researcher, would like to know whether high school student's perceptions about mathematical utility changed between their freshman and senior year. Each respondent is asked the same series of questions about the utility of mathematics in their future during their freshman and senior year. These questions are combined to form one variable of mathematical utility; higher values indicate higher levels of mathematical utility. Using the High School Longitudinal Survey, please provide: a 1 to 2 APA style paragraph statement that furnishes an answer to this question, note the relevant statistics, comment on meaningfulness, and include your relevant SPSS output.
Discussion: Research Design and t Tests: How Are They Connected?
Whether in a scholarly or practitioner setting, good research and data analysis should have the benefit of peer feedback. For this Discussion, you will perform an article critique on t tests. Be sure and remember that the goal is to obtain constructive feedback to improve the research and its interpretation, so please view this as an opportunity to learn from one another.
To prepare for this Discussion:
• Review the Learning Resources and the media programs related to t tests.
• Search for and select a quantitative article specific to your discipline and related to t tests. Help with this task may be found in the Course guide and assignment help linked in Learning Resources. Also, you can use as a guide the Research Design Alignment Table located in Learning Resources
Write a 3 to 5 paragraph critique of the article. In your critique, include responses to the following:
• Which is the research design used by the authors?
• Why did the authors use this t test?
• Do you think it's the most appropriate choice? Why or why not?
• Did the authors display the data?
• Do the results stand alone? Why or why not?
• Did the authors report effect size? If yes, is this meaningful?
Be sure to support your Main Post and Response Post with reference to the week's Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA Style.
Respond to one of your colleagues' posts and:
1. Make recommendations for the design choice.
2. Explain whether you think that this is the appropriate t test to use for the research question. Why or why not?
3. As a lay reader, were you able to understand the results and their implications? Why or why not?
REFERENCES
Frankfort-Nachmias, C., Leon-Guerrero, A., & Davis, G. (2020). Social statistics for a diverse society (9th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Chapter, "Testing Hypothesis" (pp. 243-279)
Wagner, III, W. E. (2020). Using IBM® SPSS® statistics for research methods and social science statistics (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Chapter, "Testing Hypotheses Using Means and Cross-Tabulation" (previously read in Week 5)
• Chapter, "Editing Output" (previously read in Week 2, 3, and 4)
Walden University, LLC. (Producer). (2016l). The t test for independent samples [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 5 minutes.
In this media program, Dr. Matt Jones, demonstrates the t Test for independent samples in SPSS.