Reference no: EM132776721

QAB105 Business Research Methods - Charles Darwin University

This Assignment consists of 5 parts.

A researcher wants to examine whether exam marks for undergraduate statistics units are influenced by how much time the students spend in studying statistics units during the semester. The researcher also wants to compare the results across gender and age groups. For this purpose, the researcher plans to survey a sample of undergraduate level students who studied statistics last semester. Using a maximum of 200 words for each part (Parts 1 to 4), answer the following questions.

Part 1 (200 words)
(a) Suggest a suitable survey method the researcher should use and explain why you suggest such a method.
(b) Suggest a sampling method the researcher should use to select his/her sample and explain why you suggest such a method.
(c) Discuss any issues the researcher may face in his/her data collection?

Suppose the researcher collected data from 110 respondents. For each respondent, the number of hours spent on studying statistics during 2 weeks period and the exam marks were recorded. The data are stored in the file Assignment 2 Dataset.XLS sheet available in the Written Assignment folder. Using this data and EXCEL, answer the questions below.

Part 2 (200 words)
The researcher wishes to use graphical descriptive methods and numerical descriptive measures to present the data for the two variables in various summary forms.
(a) The researcher decides to use 7 class intervals, such as 0<X≤15, 15<X≤30, ..... for the Exam mark variable and 0<X≤2, 2<X≤4, ....., for the study time variable. Explain how he/she could have decided on the number of class intervals as 7.
(b) Draw two histograms for the two variables using appropriate BIN values.
(c) Prepare a brief numerical summary report for the two variables; study time and exam mark by including the summary measures, such as mean, median, variance, standard deviation, smallest and largest values, and the three quartiles, for each variable.
(d) Based on your histograms in part (b) and descriptive summary measures in part (c), comment on the shape of the distribution of the two variables.
(e) Construct a relative frequency distribution for the two variables. Briefly comment on the relative frequency distribution.
(f) Construct a cumulative relative frequency distribution for the two variables. Briefly comment on the cumulative relative frequency distribution.

Part 3 (200 words)
(a) Explain the difference between a point estimate and interval estimate.
(b) Construct and interpret the 95% confidence interval estimate for the population average exam marks.
(c) Describe the effect of increasing the confidence level to 99% on the confidence interval estimate of part (b).
(d) Describe the effect of increasing the sample size to 150 on the confidence interval estimate of part (b).
(e) If the researcher claims that the population mean exam mark is 65, do you agree with his/her claim based on the data? Explain why.

Part 4 (200 words)
The researcher wishes to investigate the association between the number of hours spent on studying statistics and the exam marks
(a) Explain what could be the independent variable (X) and the dependent variable (Y).
(b) Using Excel, compute a numerical measure that measures the strength of the linear relationship between the exam marks and study time. Interpret this value.
(c) Draw an appropriate plot to investigate the relationship between exam marks and study time. Fit a linear trend line on this plot and display the least squares regression line and R-sqaured. Comment on the relationship between between exam marks and study time.

Part 5 (300 words)

Based on the above research activity, write a brief research report regarding the investigation of the relationship between the students' exam marks of the statistics units and the amount of time the students spend to study those statistics units.

Attachment:- Business Research Methods.rar