Assignment 2: Discussion: Measures of Central Tendency

By Saturday, July 18, 2015, post your response to the prompt in the Discussion Area below. Your initial response should be 1-2 paragraphs. Through Wednesday, July 22, 2015, review and comment on at least two peers’ responses.

Discussion Question

Simply reporting measures of central tendency or measures of variability will not tell the whole story. Using the following information, what else does a psychologist need to know or think about when interpreting this information?

A school psychologist decided to separate some classes by gender to see if learning improved. She looked at student scores on the final exam and obtained the following information: Students in boy-girl classrooms obtained an average of 71.4 on their final exams with a standard deviation of 10.8 whereas students in single-gendered classrooms obtained an average of 75.9 on their final exams with a standard deviation of 8.2. She concludes that the single-gendered classrooms lead to better learning.

Assignment 3: Research Design Questions

Suppose you were going to create your own study to examine what course-delivery format (online, blended, or face-to-face) leads to the best performance in a psychological statistics class. In a paper identify the following for your study: What is your research question? What is your hypothesis (both null and alternate)? Is this a qualitative or quantitative design (based on type of variable collected) and why? Is this a descriptive, correlational or experimental design and why? What would be an example of a variable for this study that could be measured on a nominal scale? Ordinal scale? Interval scale? Ratio scale? Once you have collected your data, would you use inferential or descriptive statistics and why? Create a sample frequency distribution for one of the variables. Choose either a simple or grouped frequency distribution and explain your choice.

By Monday, July 20, 2015, deliver your assignment to the M1: Assignment 3 Dropbox.

Assignment 3 Grading Criteria

Maximum Points

Identified an appropriate research question

3

Correctly identified the null and alternative hypotheses.

6

Explained whether your study would be classified as a qualitative or quantitative design and why.

6

Explained whether your study would be classified as a descriptive, correlational or experimental design and why.

10

Provided an example of a variable for this study that could be measure on a nominal scale, ordinal scale, interval scale, and ratio scale.

13

Explained whether inferential or descriptive statistics would be used to analyze the data collected and why.

6

Created a sample frequency distribution for one of the variables. Selected either a simple or grouped frequency distribution and explained choice.

20

Wrote in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrated ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources; displayed accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.