Inferential Research and Statistics Project

Part 1

General Psychology:

oClinicians 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 (Microsoft^® 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.