Statistics
Topic: Writer’s choice
:
I have statistics problems concerning graphs and variables pertaining to psychology.
CALCULATING FOR CHI SQUARE GRAPH
FOR SCORM 12 – FILL-IN #2
What is our chi-square statistic, rounded to one decimal place?
FOR SCORM 12 – FILLIN #3
How many degrees of freedom are associated with our chi-square test? This should be a whole number with no decimals.
Coding scheme for mentor consistency
At this point in our narrative, it is the summer before our mentees’ senior years. Most of our mentees had mentors pretty much the entire time, and that most either only had one mentor or at least one mentor involved with them for at least a year. Other mentees never had a mentor that was consistent for longer than a year. Some of these mentees still showed up to events and completed the college readiness curriculum, working with available volunteers or teachers when no mentor who was assigned to them was present. Others, understandably, did not show up to as many events. When they did, they mainly just ate the food, hung out with their friends, and avoided attempts to engage them in the curriculum.
If we were doing qualitative research, our task would be to richly describe and identify common themes among mentees’ diverse experiences. However, this is quantitative research, which deals in simple, broad-strokes descriptions. Our task, therefore, is to come up with a single set of categories that captures the breadth of mentees’ experiences with mentor consistency.
• We need at least three categories, because trying to collapse this variable down into a simple consistent vs. inconsistent binary would create a product that didn’t make much sense
• We can’t have more than six categories, because that would make any eventual graph or table hard to take in all at once.
• We can’t separate mentor consistency and curriculum completion into two different dimensions and have a set of categories for each. The finished product of this would be really complicated even if it could be produced, which it can’t. According to the above information, there aren’t any youth who had consistent mentor relationships but did not complete the curriculum. This would create an “empty cell” in our classification scheme that would make analyses impossible.
o An aside: In mixed methods research teams, there is often dynamic tension in this area. Qualitative methods people push for statistical analyses to reflect as much nuance and detail as possible, often by splitting categories up very finely. Quantitative methods people push back against this, trying to explain “degrees of freedom” in a symbolic way to people who do not do statistics regularly, asserting that more than just a little nuance makes analyses impossible or results invalid, or at least incomprehensible.
• Our categories have to be mutually exclusive, meaning that every participant has to fit into one, and only one, category. There cannot be gray areas between them.
• Using an “other” category is acceptable if absolutely necessary, but it’s kind of a cop-out and it weakens your presentation.
This set of categories has to be something you could put on a histogram or frequencies table with percentage of people in each category and have a reader immediately get where our participants were with respect to mentor consistency. Remember that you really only ever get a few seconds of a reader’s attention to your graph, and if you wouldn’t understand the histogram or frequency table in five seconds, then neither would your reader.
What you need for this assignment is:
• A set of 3-6 categories for mentor consistency that fit the above parameters (10 points). This list of category descriptions is your proposed coding scheme. If you have already seen the coding scheme described in the data set and SCORM package, then suggest an alternative.
• A critique (5 points) of another student/group’s coding scheme based on its conformity to the above parameters. If you are the first student/group to post, then wait a couple of days for others to show up.
o Do not critique a coding scheme that already has a critique posted to it unless several coding schemes are already posted and all already have at least one critique.
Work in groups or alone as you wish.
• For original posts, the full 10 points will be awarded to sets of categories that are well-thought-out, clearly described, and fit the above parameters. Contributions that represent constructive struggle with the concepts and the directions will receive 7 to 9 points. Contributions that are missing one component or that do not appear to represent a serious attempt at the assignment, including those that just recap the data set and SCORM package, will receive less, especially if they include copied or too-closely-paraphrased text.
• For critiques, the full five points will be awarded to thoughtful feedback according to the assignment parameters, the readings, and/or a realistic perspective of someone reading an eventual graph or table. Less will be awarded to feedback that just parrots back talking points assignment parameters or readings without being clearly a reply to the original poster, especially if the content is copied word-for-word from a source.
Note that this activity does not involve running any original analyses in Excel or drawing any graphs. You just need your list of 3-6 category descriptions and your critique of another student’s/group’s
GRAPH 3 – 1 QUESTION
We will ascertain significance the “retro” way because this is the only opportunity available in this course to do so. Consult either page 427 of Salkind (2017) or page 453 of Meier, Brudney, & Bohte (2015).
Value: 2
What is the critical value for our chi-square test, rounded to two decimal places? Use a p < .05 significance level.
