Reference no: EM132161337

Introduction to Psychological Research Assignment - SPSS

This assignment is divided into 3 parts.

Part 1 -

The goal of this part is simply to get you familiar with SPSS.

How to proceed

To familiarize yourself with SPSS, open up the SPSS program and then "click" on the word 'Help' at the top of the program. From the dropdown menu select "Tutorial" and work your way through the following 3 tutorials: Introduction; Reading Data; Using the Data Editor. These tutorials are excellent and should provide you will the necessary knowledge and confidence to tackle the following assignment questions.

Please note that this assignment was created or derived from SPSS-18. Sometimes, SPSS gets updated quickly and we cannot keep up (i.e., SPSS 20, 22, etc.). When this happens sometimes the data files that I ask you to retrieve and answer questions about may change or may not be included. So if you have an SPSS version that is different from SPSS 18 and you cannot find the data set that I ask you to retrieve please go to the course site and the file will be there. Or you can contact me and I'll send you the correct data set.

If your family name begins with an A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, or M please answer the following: Open or retrieve the "car_sales.sav" file (it will be on the course site, if not included in the data files that came with SPSS) and answer the following in the space provided.

1. What type of variable is "mpg" in this data set? Numeric or String

2. What was the cost of participant 56's Ford Ranger?

3. What level or scale of measurement are the "model" and "type" and "horsepow" variables? Note: In SPSS "scale" refers to both interval and ratio data

model = ________; type = ___________ horsepow = _________

4. How many miles per gallon does participant 60's vehicle get?

5. What does the "fuel_cap" variable stand for?

6. For the variable "Type". What do the 0s and 1s stand for?

7. a. How many Dodge, Ford, and Subaru vehicles are in the "car_sales.sav" file?

Dodge = _______ ; Ford = _______; Subaru: __________

b. Please title this output page, Question 7B-1 Part 1, within SPSS using 12-point font. Once titled, please submit the page "in Word format" for evaluation.

If your family name begins with a N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z please answer the following:

Open or retrieve the "dietstudy.sav" file (it will be on D2L, if not included in the data files that came with SPSS) .

1. What type of variable is "gender" in this data set? Numeric or String

2. When was the final weight of participant 14?

3. What level or scale of measurement are the "gender" and "age" and "tg0" variables? Note: In SPSS "scale" refers to both interval and ratio data

Gender = __________; Age = ___________ tg0=__________

4. What is participant 6'sfirst interim triglyceride level?

5. What does the variable "tg3" really stand for?

6. For the variable "gender" what do the 0s and 1s stand for?

7. a. How many males and females are in the "dietstudy.sav" file?

b. Please title this output page, Question 7B-2 Part 1, within SPSS using 12-point font.

Part 2 -

You should have completed unit 4 and be working on unit 5 before beginning this part of the assignment.

Now that you have some familiarity with SPSS, we can now begin to develop our own SPSS data sets (i.e., both data and variable view windows). The descriptions of 10 variables relating to a skating race that was held in Winnipeg are described below. Please create and save a SPSS data set using these 10 variables. Your data set must contain 30 subjects. In other words, you will need to create 27 fictitious people and data for these people. To get you started, the data from 3 participants are provided below. Please keep the following in mind as you create your data set. You must have equal numbers of males and females (i.e., 15 each) and you must show variability in your data. Put another way, you cannot have 4 or more subjects of the same height, weight, heart rate, or stress levels.

Variable 1: ID: This variable identifies each subject. It is string and nominal.

Variable 2: Sex: This variable represents the sex of each participant. It is numeric (1 = male; 2 = female) and nominal.

Variable 3: Height: This variable represents the height of each participant in centimetres (cm). It is numerical and scale.

Variable 4: Weight: This variable represents the weight of each participant in pounds. It is numerical and scale.

Variable 5: Time: This variable represents the time in seconds it took each participant to finish the race. It is numerical and scale.

Variable 6: Skate: This variable represents each participant's finishing position in the skating race. It is numerical and ordinal.

Variable 7: Heart_1: This variable represents each person's heart rate at the start of the race. It is numerical and scale.

Variable 8: Heart_2: This variable represents each person's heart rate at the end of the race. It is numerical and scale.

Variable 9: Stress_1: This variable represents each person's stress level at the start of the race.

Stress level is determined by participants placing a mark on a number line, where 1 is labelled, "not at all stressed," and 10 is labelled, "very stressed." It is numerical and interval. Variable 10: Stress_2: This variable represents each person's stress level at the end of the race. Stress level is determined by participants placing a mark on a number line, where 1 is labelled, "not at all stressed," and 10 is labelled, "very stressed." It is numerical and interval.

Below is the data for your first 3 subjects. Your SPSS data view screen should look similar to that observed below, except yours will have 30 subjects. Remember to think when you create your 27 fictitious participants; the more realistic you can make the data the easier it will be to interpret later. Also, don't forget that for each variable you need to create the "variable" properties in the variable view component screen of SPSS. If you look at the bottom left corner of the SPSS you'll see 2 buttons, "data view" and "variable view". Click on "variable view" and enter the properties for each variable as described above.

Please make sure that your data is unique. I will be checking for persons with similar data sets and marking accordingly. If you work together - great, but make sure the data you enter is uniquely yours!

Questions -

1. Use SPSS to calculate the mean, median, mode, variance, and standard deviation for the following variables: (Hint: Click Analyze then Descriptive Statistics then Descriptives. Then put the variables you want to analyze into the 'variables' box and click okay).

• Height
• Weight
• Skate
• Heart_1
• Heart_2

2. Now let's see if we can make some graphs. You will be submitting three graphs in total for evaluation.

Please produce and submit the following graphs for the variable(s) indicated.

a. A frequency histogram for variable Stress_1. I will let you figure out how to do this on your own. But some helpful hints: a. try Youtube; b. ask some classmates; use the help menu.

b. This graph will require you to explore the SPSS "Graphing" feature a little more. Produce, using SPSS, a bar graph that shows the average or mean height for men and women. Thus, your graph should have only 2 bars - 1 bar for the mean woman's height, and 1 bar for the mean man's height. Your graph should also have a title and labelled axes. See below for an example of the output I'm looking for.

c. Create any other graph that you think shows something that another researcher would be interested in. Be sure to label your graph and give a clear explanation describing what the graph is depicting and why you think it is important.

Do not get frustrated with SPSS as you attempt to make the graphs in question 3. Frustration hijacks your frontal lobe's ability to think logically. Trial and error problem solving will prove very helpful here. Just try different combinations of things or ask your colleagues for advice and don't forget about Youtube. There is no better learning than learning achieved through self discovery!

Part 3 -

You should have completed unit 5 before attempting this part of the assignment.

This part of the assignment deals with correlation.

Ten participants (P1-P10) enrolled in PSYC 2250 were asked the following questions:

Q1. I enjoy loud parties.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Q2. I enjoy being the life of the party.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Q3. I'm very popular at school.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Q4. How many romantic relationships have you had?

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7+

Questions

1. Enter the data into SPSS and save it.

First, create a variable called, "social." This variable will stand for a total sociability score for each participant. Thus, social = Q1 + Q2 + Q3

Rather than compute each participant's social score by hand, we can have SPSS do the work for us. Click on the word "transform" at the top of SPSS. From the menu that opens click "compute," and a window that looks like a calculator should appear. Under the word target variable (upper left) write the word, "social." This is the variable we are going to compute. Now from the list of variables on the left-hand side of the window click on the variable that represents question 1 (enjoy loud parties). Now click on the arrow and the variable should be moved into the numerical expression box. Now click on the plus (+) sign from the calculator and a plus should appear in the numerical expression box. Repeat the above procedure for question 2 (Life of party) and question 3 (Popularity). When completed check what you have done: The target variable, "social" is equal to question 1 + question 2 + questions 3. Now press the okay button. When you check your SPSS data window you should now see a new variable called "social" with the values for each subject calculated. You may want to check a few just to ensure that SPSS did things correctly.

Please copy and paste the SPSS data window or spreadsheet with the "social" variable included into a Word file. Submit this for evaluation.

2. Now you can run a simple correlation using SPSS. Click on "Analyze" then click on "Correlate," then click on "Bivariate." A window should open with your variables on the left and a box called "variables" on the right. The variables that you move into the "variables" box will be the ones that get correlated with each other. Thus, if you only move two variables into the "variables" box you will only get one meaningful correlation performed. If you move three variables into the "variables" box, SPSS will perform three separate meaningful correlations. If you move five variables into the "variables" box you will get 10 different meaningful correlations. Please note that SPSS will also correlate each variable with itself for a perfect correlation of 1. This is of course meaningless - so please read your SPSS output carefully. You will also see that correlation matrix produced by SPSS is a mirror image! Thus, if you draw a diagonal line through all the perfect correlations (r = 1), the correlations below the line are the same as those above the line.

Move all 5 of your variables into the variables box. Please ensure that the Pearson, two-tailed, and flag significant correlation buttons are checked or activated; these buttons will be explained in more detail in PSYC 2260. Now press the "OK" button. An output window should appear with the correlations you just ran-pretty easy! See the example below to learn how to read the output.

Please export your SPSS correlation output to Word and submit for evaluation. But before you submit for evaluation, please do the following:

a. Tell me what the largest correlation is and what variables it is between. Now explain why you think the correlation is large?

b. Tell me what the smallest correlations is and what variables it is between. Now explain why you think the correlation is small?

3. Finally, produce a simple scattergram with number of romantic relationships "romance" on the Y- axis, and your total sociability score "social" on the X-axis. Be sure to title and label your graph in Word, and please write a sentence or two underneath the graph, explaining what you see and if what you see corresponds to the r value between 'romance' and 'social' that you reported in question 2.

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar