PSY 315 Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5 assignment

PSY 315 Statistical Reasoning in Psychology ( PSY/315 Entire Course ) A+ Solution

PSY 315 Week 1 Practice Worksheet

PSY 315 Week 2 Discussion Questions

PSY 315 Week 2 Practice Worksheet

PSY 315 Week 3 Assignment Practice Worksheet

PSY 315 Week 3 Discussion Questions

PSY 315 Week 3 Inferential Research and Statistics Project, Part 1

PSY 315 Week 4 Inferential Research and Statistics Project, Part 2

PSY 315 Week 4 Practice Worksheet

PSY 315 Week 5 Discussion Questions

PSY 315 Week 5 Inferential Research and Statistics Project, Part 3

PSY 315 Week 5 Practice Worksheet

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PSY 315 Week 1 Assignment Practice Worksheet

Complete the University of Phoenix Material: Week 1 Practice Worksheet.

Week 1 Practice Worksheet

Provide a response to the following questions. Written responses should be at least 30 to 45 words each.

1.      Explain and provide an example for each of the following types of variables:

a.       Nominal:
 

b.      Ordinal:
 

c.       Interval:
 

d.      Ratio scale:
 

e.       Continuous:
 

f.       Discrete:

g.      Quantitative:

h.      Qualitative:

2.      The following are the speeds of 40 cars clocked by radar on a particular road in a 35 miles-per-hour zone on an afternoon:
 

30, 36, 42, 36, 30, 52, 36, 34, 36, 33, 30, 32, 35, 32, 37, 34, 36, 31, 35, 20

24, 46, 23, 31, 32, 45, 34, 37, 28, 40, 34, 38, 40, 52, 31, 33, 15, 27, 36, 40
 

Create a frequency table and a histogram. Then, describe the general shape of the distribution.

 

3.      Raskauskas and Stoltz (2007) asked a group of 84 adolescents about their involvement in traditional and electronic bullying. The researchers defined electronic bullying as “…a means of bullying in which peers use electronics (such as text messages, emails, and defaming Web sites) to taunt, threaten, harass, and/or intimidate a peer” (p. 565). The table below is a frequency table showing the adolescents’ reported incidence of being victims or perpetrators of traditional and electronic bullying.
 

a.       Using the table below as an example, explain the idea of a frequency table to a person who has never taken a course in statistics.
 

b.      Explain the general meaning of the pattern of results.

Incidence of Traditional and Electronic Bullying and Victimization (N = 84)

Forms of bullying

N

%

Electronic victims

41

48.8

Text-message victim

27

32.1

Internet victim (websites, chatrooms)

13

15.5

Camera-phone victim

8

9.5

Traditional victims

60

71.4

Physical victim

38

45.2

Teasing victim

50

59.5

Rumors victim

32

38.6

Exclusion victim

30

50

Electronic bullies

18

21.4

Text-message bully

18

21.4

Internet bully

11

13.1

Traditional bullies

54

64.3

Physical bully

29

34.5

Teasing bully

38

45.2

Rumor bully

22

26.2

Exclusion bully

35

41.7

4.      Describe whether each of the following data words best describes descriptive statistics or inferential statistics. Explain your reasoning.
 

1. Describe:
    
2. Infer:
    
3. Summarize:

5.      Compare the three types of research methods and statistics.

6.      Regarding gun ownership in the United States, data from Gallup polls over a 40-year period show how gun ownership in the United States has changed. The results are described below, with the percentage of Americans who own guns given in each of the 5 decades.

Year

%

1972

43

1982

42

1992

48

2002

40

2012

43

1. Are the percentages reported above an example of descriptive statistics or inferential statistics?  Why?
    
2. Based on the table, how would you describe the changes in gun ownership in the United States over the 40 years shown?

7.      Refer to the Simpson-Southward et al. (2016) article from this week’s electronic readings. Was this an example of inferential statistics and research or descriptive statistics and research? Justify your response.

PSY 315 Week 2 Discussion Questions

Watch Segment 3, "Measures of Central Tendency: Mode, Median and Mean," of the "Organizing Quantitative Data" video, located in this week's Electronic Reserve Readings.

1. Which measure is not affected by outliers? Why?

Watch Segment 5, "Measures of Dispersion: Range and Standard Deviation," of the "Organizing Quantitative Data" video, located in this week's Electronic Reserve Readings.

2. What information does range provide about a data set?

Watch Segment 1, "Probability Distributions for Random Variables," of the "Normal Distribution for Continuous Random Variable" video, located in this week's Electronic Reserve Readings.

3. What percentages represent the standard normal distribution for continuous random variables according to the empirical rule?

4. Compare the three different measures of central tendency.

5. Are all measures of central tendency appropriate for all scales of measurement? Why or why not?

6. How is a sample mean different than a population mean?

7. How is the variance related to the standard deviation of a data set?

8. How does the empirical rule relate to the standard deviation?

PSY 315 Week 2 Practice Worksheet

Complete the University of Phoenix Material: Week 2 Practice Worksheet.

Provide a response to the following questions.

1.      The Wilcox & Keselman (2003) article from this week’s electronic readings discusses two problems with measures of central tendency: skewness of the data and outliers. Discuss each of these issues and how they affect measures of central tendency.

2.      For the following scores, find the mean, median, and mode. Which would be the most appropriate  measure for this data set? You may use Microsoft® Excel® data anlysis to compute these statistics.  You may copy your output from Microsoft® Excel® into this worksheet.

2, 2, 0, 5,1, 4,1, 3, 0, 0, 1, 4, 4, 0,1, 4, 3, 4, 2, 1

3.      Based on the scale of measurement for each variable listed below, which measure of central tendency is most appropriate for describing the data?

a.       The time (in years) it takes a sample of students to graduate college.

b.      The blood type (such as A, B, AB, or O) of a group of participants.

c.       The rankings of college undergraduate academic programs.

4.      How do the sample mean and the population mean differ? What is the symbol for each type of mean?

5.      An expert reviews a sample of 10 scientific articles (n = 10) and records the following numbers of error in each article: 0, 4, 2, 8, 2, 3, 1, 0, 5, and 7. Compute the SS, the variance, and the standard deviation for this sample using the definitional and computational formulas. You may use Microsoft® Excel® data anlysis to compute these statistics. You may copy your output from Microsoft® Excel® into this worksheet.

6.      A psychologist interested in political behavior measured the square footage of the desks in the official office of four U.S. governors and of four CEOs of major U.S. corporations. The figures for the governors were 44, 36, 52, and 40 square feet. The figures for the CEOs were 32, 60, 48, 36 square feet.

a.       Figure the means and standard deviations for the each group: governors and CEOs.

 

b.      Explain, to a person who has never had a course in statistics, what you have done.

 

c.       Note the ways in which the means and standard deviations differ, and speculate on the possible meaning of these differences, presuming they are representative of U.S. governors and large corporations’ CEOs in general.
 

7.      Radel and colleagues (2011) conducted a study of how feeling overly controlled makes you desire—even unconsciously—more freedom. In their study, 52 Canadian undergraduates played a video game in a laboratory and were randomly assigned to one1 of the following:

·         An automony deprivation condition, in which they were told to follow instructions precisely, constantly given instructions over a loudspeaker, and carefully observed on everything they did.

·         A neutral condition, which was much more laid back.
 

After this activity, they were asked to do a lexical decision task (a standard approach for measuring unconscious responses), in which they were shown a series of words and nonwords in random order and had to press C if it was a real word or N if not. Half of the real words were related to autonomy (such as freedom and choice), and half were neutral (such as whisper and hammer). The key focus of the study was on how long it took people to press the button (response latency) for each kind of real word, averaged over the many words of each type. The table below shows the mean and standard deviation across the participants of these four categories of results. For example, 782 milliseconds (thousandths of a second) is the average time it took participants in the autonomy-deprived condition to respond to the autonomy-related words, and 211 is the standard deviation across the 26 participants’ average response time in that condition. Explain the numbers in this table to a person who has never taken a course in statistics. (Be sure to explain some specific numbers, as well as the general principle of the mean and standard deviation.) For your interest, the pattern of results shown here supported the researchers’ hypothesis: “Relative to a neutral instructional climate, a controlling climate thwarting the need for autonomy…enhanced accessibility for autonomy-related words” (p. 924).

Mean Latencies (in Milliseconds) in the Lexical Task Assessing Accessibility for Autonomy-Related Constructs (Experiment 1)

Condition

Autonomy Deprivation

Neutral

Construct

M

SD

M

SD

Autonomy-related words

782

211

857

243

Neutral words

835

258

841

301

8.      A researcher records the levels of attraction for various fashion models among college students. He finds that mean levels of attraction are much higher than the median and the mode for these data.
 

a.       What is the shape of the distribution for the data in this study?

b.      What measure of central tendency is most appropriate for describing these data? Why?

9.      An organizational psychologist measures levels of job satisfaction in a sample of 30 participants. To measure the variance of job satisfaction, it is calculated that the SS = 120 for this sample.
 

1. What are the degrees of freedom for the variance?
2. Compute the variance and standard deviation (you will have to do this one by hand).

10.   State the three empirical rules for a normal distribution with any mean and varaince.

 

PSY-315 Week 3 Discussion Questions

Complete eight discussion questions. Reply must be 75 words or more. Please provide references for each answer.

Watch the "Statistics: Z-Score Table" segment of the "Probability Distributions for Continuous Random Variables" video.

1. What does a Z score tell you?

2. What does it mean if the Z score has a negative sign?

Watch Segment 2, "Statistics: Probability and Prediction," of the "Inferential statistics" video, located in this week's Electronic Reserve Readings.

3. When do you need to set a very low (smaller) level of chance in research?

Watch the "Hypotheses: Null Hypothesis, Alternative Hypothesis, Two-Tailed Hypothesis" segment of the "Introduction to Designing Experiments" video.

4. What is a random sample? Provide an example.

5. Explain the eight characteristics of a normal distribution.

6. Explain why converting raw scores to z scores is helpful in understanding data.

7. Explain the concept of a sampling distribution.

8. Identify three characteristics of the sampling distribution of the sample mean.

PSY 315 Week 3 Practice Worksheet

Complete the University of Phoenix Material: Week 3 Practice Worksheet.

Provide a response to the following questions.

Note: Each team member should compute the following questions and submit to the Learning Team forum. The team should then discuss each team member’s answers to ascertain the correct answer for each question. Once the team has answered all the questions, submit a finalized team worksheet.

1.      On a standard measure of hearing ability, the mean is 300, and the standard deviation is 20. Provide the Z scores for persons whose raw scores are 340, 310, and 260. Provide the raw scores for persons whose Z scores on this test are 2.4, 1.5, and -4.5.
 

2.      Using the unit normal table, find the proportion under the standard normal curve that lies in the tail for each of the following:
 

a.       z = 1.00

b.      z = -1.05

c.       z = 0

d.      z = 2.80

e.       z = 1.96

3.      Suppose the scores of architects on a particular creativity test are normally distributed. Using a normal curve table (pp. 477–480 of the text), what percentage of architects have Z scores
 

a.       above .10?

b.      below .10?

c.       above .20?

d.      below .20?

e.       above 1.10?

f.       below 1.10?

g.      above -.10?

h.      below -.10?

4.      A statistics instructor wants to measure the effectiveness of his teaching skills in a class of 102 students (N = 102). He selects students by waiting at the door to the classroom prior to his lecture and pulling aside every third student to give him or her a questionnaire.

1. Is this sample design an example of random sampling? Explain.
2. Assuming that all students attend his class that day, how many students will the instructor select to complete his questionnaire?

5.      Suppose you were going to conduct a survey of visitors to your campus. You want the survey to be as representative as possible.

a.       How would you select the people to survey?

b.      Why would that be your best method?

PSY/315 Week 3 Inferential Research and Statistics Project, Part 1 (Two Solutions: PTSD and Missed Appointments)

Resource: University of Phoenix Material: Inferential Research and Statistics Project

Complete Part 1 of the Inferential Research and Statistics Project.

Select one of the following scenarios based on your particular field of interest in psychology:

·         Industrial/Organizational Psychology:
 

o   A few months ago, the upper management at a large corporation decided they wanted to make major changes in the organization. Leadership is concerned that employees may be resistant to the change, and they want to find out if there is a change management method that would help employees accept change more effectively and keep employee satisfaction high. Two methods they have considered are the ADKAR Framework and the Prosci Change Management Methodology. The company wants to implement a small change in two departments before they make any major organization changes and would like to test the methods. The corporation uses the Devine Company to measure employee satisfaction with an anonymous survey.
 

·         Applied Psychology:
 

o   A large medical facility is experiencing too many missed appointments in its primary and specialty care clinics. The facility has noticed that not all patients respond well to reminder calls regarding follow-up appointments. Some patients do not answer calls and do not seem to respond to voice mail requesting they call the facility. The result is that many follow up appointments are missed. Management has read articles that people respond very well to text messages and would like to see which method provides the least amount of missed appointments. Missed appointments are tracked in the facility database on a monthly basis.
 

·         General Psychology:
 

o   Clinicians at a small clinic have been introduced to a new method to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in their clients for veterans. Research indicates that virtual reality (VR) is a highly effective treatment option for patients with PTSD. Currently, the clinic uses only cognitive processing therapy (CPT) with their patients suffering from PTSD. The clinicians would like to find out whether VR therapy has different results from CPT therapy. The measure used by the clinic to measure PTSD symptoms is the Combat Exposure Scale. Both therapies need to be applied for a minimum of 12 weeks to be effective.

Write a 525- to 750-word paper that addresses the following for your chosen scenario:

·         Clearly define the problem or issue you are addressing. Provide a brief background of any research you have found that might affect your research hypothesis.
 

·         Create a research hypothesis based on the information provided in each scenario. You have been given a data set (Excel document) with two sets of interval data (just the numbers, as you must decide what they represent, such as method A results or method B results). This means you are going to test one thing against another, such as which method works best (step 1 of the steps to hypothesis testing). State the null and research hypotheses. Explain whether these hypotheses require a one-tailed test or two-tailed test, and explain your rationale.
 

·         Describe the sample you will use. Sample size will be 30 for each group, which are provided in your data set. Explain what type of sampling you selected.
 

·         Do you think you would also collect some descriptive data, such as gender, age, or shift? Why do you think it makes sense to collect descriptive data?

Format your paper according to APA guidelines.

Example

You have a hypothesis that two drugs have different effects on lowering anxiety. You would have anxiety scores for drug A and anxiety scores for drug B (all after 4 weeks of treatment) to run inferential analysis for after 4 weeks.

·         Null hypothesis is H0: drug A = drug B

·         Research hypothesis is H1: drug A ≠ drug B

·         Dependent variable: Anxiety score changed after treatment.

·         Independent variable: drug treatment

Because you did not state a direction in your hypotheses (better than or worse than), this will be a two-tailed test. You are looking for differences in either direction. You would set your alpha level of .05 and have a sample for each group of 30 people that were volunteers for the study.

Data

GROUP 1

GROUP 2

1.3

6.5

2.5

8.7

2.3

9.8

8.1

10.2

5

7.9

7

6.5

7.5

8.7

5.2

7.9

4.4

8.7

7.6

9.1

9

8.4

7.6

6.4

4.5

7.2

1.1

5.8

5.6

6.9

6.2

5.9

7

7.6

6.9

7.8

5.6

7.3

5.2

4.6

9

8.4

7.6

6.4

4.5

7.2

1.1

5.8

5.6

6.9

6.2

5.9

7

7.6

6.9

7.8

5.6

7.3

5.2

4.6

PSY 315 Week 4 Inferential Research and Statistics Project, Part 2

Analyze the data from Part 1 using Microsoft^® Excel^® software. 

Write a 700- to 875-word paper that includes the following information:

·         Describe what method you are using to compare groups.

·         Copy and paste the output into a Microsoft^® Word document, and also answer the following questions:
 

o   What is the significance level of the comparison?

o   What was the alpha level you identified in Week 3?

o   What was the means and variance for each variable?

o   What was the test statistic?

o   What was the critical value for both the one- and two-tailed test? 

o   Was your test one-tailed or two-tailed?

o   Were you able to reject the null hypothesis? In other words, did you prove there was a difference?

·         Talk about what these results mean in everyday language and in context to your chosen scenario.

·         Make a recommendation based on the findings.

Format your paper according to APA guidelines.

Example of Output You Would Use to Answer These Questions

t Test: Two-Sample Assuming Equal Variances

        Variable 1

       Variable 2

Mean

4.875

8

Variance

5.267857143

18.28571429

Observations

8

8

Pooled variance

11.77678571

Hypothesized mean difference

0

df

14

t stat

-1.821237697

P(T <= t) one-tail

0.045002328

t Critical one-tail

1.761310136

P(T <= t) two-tail

0.090004655

t Critical two-tail

2.144786688

PSY 315 Week 4 Practice Worksheet

Provide a response to the following questions.

1.       Two boats, the Prada (Italy) and the Oracle (USA), are competing for a spot in the upcoming America’s Cup race. They race over a part of the course several times. The sample times in minutes for the Prada were as follows: 12.9, 12.5, 11.0, 13.3, 11.2, 11.4, 11.6, 12.3, 14.2, and 11.3. The sample times in minutes for the Oracle were as follows: 14.1, 14.1, 14.2, 17.4, 15.8, 16.7, 16.1, 13.3, 13.4, 13.6, 10.8, and 19.0. For data analysis, the appropriate test is the t test: two-sample assuming unequal variances.
 

The next table shows the results of this independent t test. At the .05 significance level, can you conclude that there is a difference in their mean times? Explain these results to a person who knows about the t test for a single sample but who is unfamiliar with the t test for independent means.

Hypothesis Test: Independent Groups (t test, unequal variance)

Prada

Oracle

12.170

14.875

mean

1.056

2.208

std. dev.

10

12

n

16

df

-2.7050

difference (Prada - Oracle)

0.7196

standard error of difference

0

hypothesized difference

-3.76

 t

.0017

 p-value (two-tailed)

-4.2304

confidence interval 95.% lower

-1.1796

confidence interval 95.% upper

1.5254

margin of error

2.       The Willow Run Outlet Mall has two Haggar Outlet Stores, one located on Peach Street and the other on Plum Street. The two stores are laid out differently, but both store managers claim their layout maximizes the amounts customers will purchase on impulse. A sample of 10 customers at the Peach Street store revealed they spent the following amounts more than planned: $17.58, $19.73, $12.61, $17.79, $16.22, $15.82, $15.40, $15.86, $11.82, $15.85. A sample of 14 customers at the Plum Street store revealed they spent the following amounts more than they planned when they entered the store: $18.19, $20.22, $17.38, $17.96, $23.92, $15.87, $16.47, $15.96, $16.79, $16.74, $21.40, $20.57, $19.79, $14.83. For data analysis, a t test: two-sample assuming unequal variances was used.
 

At the .01 significance level, is there a difference in the mean amount purchased on an impulse at the two stores? Explain these results to a person who knows about the t test for a single sample but who is unfamiliar with the t test for independent means.

Hypothesis Test: Independent Groups (t test, unequal variance)

Peach Street

Plum Street

15.8680

18.2921

mean

2.3306

2.5527

std. dev.

10

14

n

20

df

-2.42414

difference (Peach Street - Plum Street)

1.00431

standard error of difference

0

hypothesized difference

-2.41

 t

.0255

 p-value (two-tailed)

-5.28173

confidence interval 99.% lower

0.43345

confidence interval 99.% upper

2.85759

margin of error

3.       Fry Brothers Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc. employs Larry Clark and George Murnen to make service calls to repair furnaces and air conditioning units in homes. Tom Fry, the owner, would like to know whether there is a difference in the mean number of service calls they make per day. Assume the population standard deviation for Larry Clark is 1.05 calls per day, and 1.23 calls per day for George Murnen. A random sample of 40 days last year showed that Larry Clark made an average of 4.77 calls per day. For a sample of 50 days, George Murnen made an average of 5.02 calls per day. At the .05 significance level, is there a difference in the mean number of calls per day between the two employees? What is the p-value?

Hypothesis Test: Independent Groups (t test, pooled variance)

Larry

George

4.77

5.02

mean

1.05

1.23

std. dev.

40

50

n

88 

df

-0.25000

difference (Larry - George)

1.33102

pooled variance

1.15370

pooled std. dev.

0.24474

standard error of difference

0

hypothesized difference

-1.02

 t

.3098

 p-value (two-tailed)

-0.73636

confidence interval 95.% lower

0.23636

confidence interval 95.% upper

0.48636

margin of error

PSY 315 Week 5 Discussion Questions

Complete seven discussion questions. Reply must be 75 words or more Please provide references for answers.

Watch Segment 7, "Correlational Method" of the "Exploring Qualitative Methods" video, located in this week's Electronic Reserve Readings.

1. If there was a perfect relationship between two variables, what would the scatterplot look like? (Use for question two also).

2. Why?

3. Does a negative correlation mean there is a weaker relationship between two variables? (Use for question 4 also)

4. Why or why not?

5. Explain three assumptions for the evaluation of a correlation coefficient.

6. Explain three limitations for evaluation a correlation coefficient.

7. Explain when you would use a Spearman and a point-biserial.

8. Explain when you would use a phi correlation coefficient.

PSY 315 Week 5 Inferential Research and Statistics Project, Part 3

Create a 12- to 15-slide presentation using the information you gathered and submitted in Weeks 3 & 4. Include the following:

·         Describe the problem, and provide some brief background about the situation.
 

·         Explain the research hypothesis.
 

·         Describe your sample and your sampling method.
 

·         Explain the four steps of the research process you followed, and define the critical value and the test statistic your analysis provided.
 

·         Provide the main finding of the study. What did you prove or fail to prove?
 

·         Provide recommendations based on your findings.

Format any citations in your presentation according to APA guidelines.

PSY 315 Week 5 Practice Worksheet

Provide a response to the following questions.

Note: Each team member should compute the following questions and submit them to the Learning Team forum. The team should then discuss each team member’s answers to ascertain the correct answer for each question. Once your team has answered all the questions, submit a finalized team worksheet.

Your research team has been tasked with finding the correlation of the following scenario:

Four research participants take a test of manual dexterity (high scores mean better dexterity) and an anxiety test (high scores mean more anxiety). The scores are as follows:

Person                         Dexterity                     Anxiety

1                                  1                                  10

2                                  1                                    8

3                                  2                                    4

4                                  4                                  -2

Describe the process your research team would go through by completing the following:

1.      Create a scatter diagram of the scores, which should be a negative direction.
 

2.      Describe in words the general pattern of correlation, if any.
 

3.      Figure the correlation coefficient.

4.      Figure whether the correlation is statistically significant (use the .05 significance level, two-tailed).
 

5.      Explain the logic of what you have done, writing as if you are speaking to someone who has never heard of correlation (but who does understand the mean, standard deviation, Z scores, and hypothesis testing).
 

6.      Provide three logically possible directions of causality, indicating for each direction whether it is a reasonable explanation for the correlation in light of the variables involved. Explain why.

Course: PSY315 Statistical Reasoning in Psychology