Analysis Questions on Experimental Designs and Data

Please use the submission link on the module VLE page. There are separate submission links for students with and without RASAs.

• You may submit multiple times, but your document in place at time of deadline will be the one marked. Please submit a single document file (e.g. Word .docx) containing all answers for the assessment to the submission link. Please label the file with your Student ID number only. Do not identify yourself by name anywhere in the document.

• If you miss the submission deadline for reasons that are outside of your control you should apply for extenuating circumstances

• The department is not able to allow assessment performance consideration, therefore if you do not feel able to take the exam  during the allocated period, do not sit the exam. Instead submit an application for extenuating circumstances and request to defer the exam to the August exam period.

It has been suggested that safety measures, such as protective flooring in children’s playgrounds, can have the unwanted effect of making people behave more dangerously. A researcher wanted to test this claim by measuring risk taking behaviour in younger and older children while they were in a playground with or without protective flooring. For each child, an overall risk taking score was calculated based on how high they climbed on the climbing frame, how high they went on the swings, and how fast they went on the see-saw. Below are the risk taking scores obtained in the study (standard deviation in brackets). Higher scores indicate greater risk taking.

a.Identify the type of design used and explain whether you think it was appropriate for this study (max 8 points).

b. Which type of analysis was used, and was it appropriate for this experiment? Justify your answer (max 7 points).

c. How many participants were included in the study? Which factors should the researcher take into account when deciding how many participants to run (max 6 points)?

d. Draw a suitably labelled figure (graph paper not required) to illustrate the results of this study. Looking at the graph, which effects do you expect to be significant and why ?

e. Use standard APA format to report and interpret the ANOVA results. From these results, what can you conclude regarding the effect of safety measures on risk taking behaviour ?

f. Describe which follow-up tests may be appropriate for this study and how you would control for Type-I error (max 8 points)

Look through the SPSS OUTPUT below and answer the following questions:

a. Identify the type of design used and explain whether you think it was appropriate for this study (max 8 points).

b. Which type of analysis was used, and was it appropriate for this experiment? Justify your answer (max 7 points).

c. How many participants were included in the study? Which factors should the researcher take into account when deciding how many participants to run (max 6 points)?

d. Draw an appropriately labelled figure (graph paper not included) to illustrate the outcome of this study. Looking at the graph, which effects do you expect to be significant and why ?

e. Use standard APA format to report and interpret the results. What do these results suggest regarding the effect of note taking on learning concrete and abstract information ?

f. Describe which follow-up tests may be appropriate for this study and how you would control for Type-I error (max 8 points).

A researcher investigated possible predictors of risky driving behaviour in 120 young drivers. Self-report ratings of risk taking were taken, as well as risk perception, attitudes towards traffic safety, aggression, anxiety, and altruism Look through the SPSS output below and answer the following questions:

a) What type of analysis was carried out (max 9 points)?

b) Was the sample sufficiently large for this kind of analysis?

c) Do the predictor variables as a whole significantly predict risky driving behaviour?

d) What does the Adjusted R2 tell you about this model ?

e) The researcher decides that it would be better to have fewer predictors. Which predictors should be kept, and why (max 10 points)?

Look through the SPSS output below and answer the following questions:

a) Was the sample sufficiently large for the type of analysis?

b) Were the correlations worth factoring in the first place?

c) Were all the variables worth keeping in the analysis?

d) How many factors would you have extracted?

e) What is the difference between the Factor Matrix and the Rotated Factor Matrix ?

f) How would you name and describe the factors extracted?