PSY 315 Week 1 Week One Practice Problems Worksheet

Resource: Statistics for Psychology

Complete the Week One Practice Problems Worksheet.

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Note. Computation methods may include the use of Microsoft® Excel®, SPSS™, Lotus®, SAS®, Minitab®, or by-hand computation.

Week One Practice Problems

Prepare a written response to the following questions.

Chapter 1

12. Explain and give an example for each of the following types of variables:

1. Equal interval:
2. Rank-order:
3. Nominal:
4. Ratio scale:
5. Continuous:
6. Discrete:

15. Following are the speeds of 40 cars clocked by radar on a particular road in a 35-mph zone on a particular afternoon:

30, 36, 42, 36, 30, 52, 36, 34, 36, 33, 30, 32, 35, 32, 37, 34, 36, 31, 35, 20

24, 46, 23, 31, 32, 45, 34, 37, 28, 40, 34, 38, 40, 52, 31, 33, 15, 27, 36, 40

Make a frequency table and a histogram, then describe the general shape of the distribution

21. Raskauskas and Stoltz (2007) asked a group of 84 adolescents about their involvement in traditional and electronic bullying. The researchers defined electronic bullying as “…a means of bullying in which peers use electronics {such as text messages, emails, and defaming Web sites} to taunt, threaten, harass, and/or intimidate a peer” (p.565). The table below is a frequency table showing the adolescents’ reported incidence of being victims or perpetrators or traditional and electronic bullying.

1. Using this table as an example, explain the idea of a frequency table to a person who has never had a course in statistics.
2. Explain the general meaning of the pattern of results.

22. Kärnä and colleagues (2013) tested the effects of a new antibullying program, called KiVa, among students in grades 1–3 and grades 7–9 in 147 schools in Finland. The schools were randomly assigned to receive the new antibullying program or no program. At the beginning, middle, and end of the school year, all of the students completed a number of questionnaires, which included the following two questions: “How often have you been bullied at school in the last couple of months?” and “How often have you bullied others at school in the last couple of months?” The table below is a frequency table that shows students’ responses to these two questions at the end of the school year (referred to as “Wave 3” in the title of the table). Note that the table shows the results combined for all of the students in the study. In the table, “victimization” refers to students’ reports of being bullied and “bullying” is students’ reports of bullying other students.
23. Using this table as an example, explain the idea of a frequency table to a person who has never had a course in statistics.
24. Explain the general meaning of the pattern of results. (You may be interested to know that the KiVa program successfully reduced victimization and bullying among students in grades 1–3 but the results were mixed with regards to the effectiveness of the program among those in grades 7–9.).