[SOLVED] Revised New Variable
You will use the information contained in this file to report in the results section of this assignment. It contains means, medians, modes, and standard deviations for every item, and correlations between every non-social media use item and the social media use composite score (see below regarding details for which values you are expected to report). The columns reporting the statistics for the composite scores are highlighted in yellow. The composite scores for the social media use and school/work-life balance variables were computed by combining the scores from the two sets of four items that measured these two variables (that is, for each respondent, the values of the four responses to the social media use items were added together to produce the social media use composite score. The same procedure was performed for the school/work-life balance items to produce the school/work-life balance composite score). You are expected to report the composite scores, and not the scores of the individual items, for the social media use and school/work-life balance variables. What to do if your “New Variable” was not measured: It may be the case that your “New Variable”, as written about in your assignment 1, is not measured by the survey (there are a variety of reasons this could occur; if you have concerns, please contact Patrick). This is absolutely fine, and you will not be expected to fully “re-write” the introduction/methods section. If this does occur, go through these steps: Scan the rest of the items on the survey. It may be that an item developed by another student measures a similar variable to your own, and you could use the results from this item to report in this assignment. If there are no items on the survey that measure a similar variable to your “New Variable”, you will have to choose an item to report on from the survey that is not related to what you wrote about in Writing Assignment 1. Try to select an item that you find interesting and would like to be writing about. In either case (whether there is a similar item you can use, or if you have to choose a “brand-new” item/variable) the only thing you will have to do for Writing Assignment 2/3 is modify your title page with this information: Specify what your “Revised New Variable” is by naming the variable and the Item Number of the survey item that measures it. Specify a “New Hypothesis” that relates the concept of “social media use” to the “Revised New Variable” that you have chosen. This hypothesis should be in the standard two-sentence format. You do not have to do any further work: this information lets us know that your original new variable did not appear on the survey and tells us what your revised variable and revised hypothesis are. We need this information so that we will have the proper context in which to evaluate the rest of your paper. For your new hypothesis, ?do not? do a literature search, and you are not expected to write up any literature review. Outline: In this assignment, you will continue developing the class project report which will constitute Assignment 3, the final graded term paper. In this class project, what has already occurred is: You have read the Core Article and became familiar with the “Core Article Variable” of social media use. The Core article reported a weakly negative relationship between their measures of social media use and a measure of work-family balance. You have selected a “New Variable” and performed a literature review in order to develop a research question and hypothesis considering the relationship between social media use and your “New Variable”. You wrote up this literature review and plans for a survey into a “research proposal”, which constituted Writing Assignment 1. You and your classmates have developed survey items to measure characteristics that you hypothesize to be related to (i.e., are predicted by) social media use. The teaching staff have used those items and some additional ones to create a survey questionnaire. The additional items that the teaching staff have included are items on social media use and school/work-life balance. These items have been included for two reasons: So that you can determine the relationship between social media use and your variable of interest. So that the class can determine if the results of the Core Article (regarding the relationship between social media use and work-life balance) have been replicated. What will now occur in the process of completing Writing Assignment 2 is: The class will take the survey (i.e., serve as its own participants). The teaching staff will analyze the data and provide you with basic statistics (e.g., means, correlation coefficients). The responses from items considering social media use and school/work-life balance will each be combined into single composite scores (which will be clearly labeled in the results file). Because these scores will have been combined, you will need to remember that they are no longer on a 7-point scale when you interpret and report the values in your Writing Assignment 2. The results document will clearly state the range of the composite scores. You will interpret the results of the survey items that measure social media use, school/work-life balance, and the item that measures your “New Variable”. You will report these results and interpretations in the Results and Discussion sections that will constitute Writing Assignment 2. The paper that you submit for Assignment 2 is worth 30 points, and will consist of: The APA-formatted title page, Introduction, Methods, and References sections that you submitted for Writing Assignment 1 (5 points). The Results and Discussion sections that constitute the rest of Writing Assignment 2 should be positioned in the proper location within this document (that is, the Introduction/Methods sections should come before the Results/Discussion sections, and the References section last). Iris will be giving feedback on ONLY the Results and Discussion sections for this assignment; we ask you to include the rest of the material for two reasons: 1. to provide context to your Results/Discussion section, if it is relevant for feedback; and 2. so that you have a document that contains the majority of the material that you will be asked to submit for Writing Assignment 3. A Results section (10 points) which includes four paragraphs: First paragraph (2-4 sentences; 2 points): Social media use. On average, how much “social media use” do the respondents engage in? Tell the reader about this by using the statistics weve provided– the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the composite score — but dont just say For social media use…” and report the statistics. Pretend that your reader does not know what a mean, median, and mode are, so use those statistics (just these measures of central tendency) to describe the social media use of students in our class (i.e., in plain language), while reporting the values of the statistics alongside this description. You also want to ensure that you report the fact that this is an composite score. Second paragraph (2-4 sentences; 2 points): School/work-life balance. Find and report the mean and standard deviation for the composite score of the school/work-life balance items. You do not need to report the median and mode for this variable, but you should again describe the school/work-life balance of the class along with reporting the values of the statistics. Third paragraph (2-4 sentences; 2 points): Correlation between social media use and school/work-life balance. In this paragraph you should find and report the correlation (strength, direction, level of statistical significance (see guide below)) between the composite social media use score and the composite school/work-life balance score. Again, you should be describing the quality of the association along with reporting the value of the statistic. To determine whether that correlation value is statistically significant or not statistically significant, you will need to use the guidance provided below. Remember, you are using the statistics presented in the Excel column for the (combined) score for those variables, not for the individual items used to create each score. Fourth paragraph (4-8 sentences; 4 points): Your “New Variable” and the correlation to social media use. In this paragraph, you will first report the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of the item you have chosen to report (which should be the item you submitted, unless it was not included. If so, see above) in a manner similar to how you have reported social media use and school/work-life balance. Then, you will report the correlation (strength, direction, level of significance) between social media use and your “New Variable”. Make sure to describe these statistics as you have for the previous variables. A Discussion section (10 points) which includes: A summary of the study (4 points). You should succinctly describe the findings related to social media use, school/work-life balance, and your “New Variable”. Be sure to address whether or not the findings of the original Core Article (concerning social media use and work-life balance) were replicated by our measures of social media use and school/work-life balance. What is the implication of the presence of a replication, or a lack of one? A discussion of the theoretical or practical implications of the observed result between social media use and your “New Variable” (4 points). If a significant correlation between social media use and your “New Variable” was observed, what is the importance of this relationship? Here, you may speculate on causal factors, but you must be clear that you are speculating/thinking of future directions. If a significant correlation was not observed, speculate on why a relation between the two variables might not exist (but again, be clear that this is speculation – when you do, you can easily transition into the next portion). Limitations/future directions (2 points) – What were some potential limitations of this study? How could these limitations impact how the results are interpreted? How could this research be extended, expanded, or continued in the future? Five (5) additional points will be attributed to overall clarity, presence of scientific writing, and adherence to formatting requirements. Statistical significance and describing correlations: The descriptive statistics and correlations that you will be reporting in your paper are based on the responses of about 50 students. (The sample size varies depending on how many students, if any, chose not to respond to a particular survey item. We will ignore sample size variation in our class project reports). For a sample of 50 participants, the absolute value of a correlation needs to be .28 or higher to be considered statistically significant. If this is the case, you should report the correlation as statistically significant, and include “p < .05". If the absolute value of the correlation is less that .28, you should report it as not statistically significant and include "p >= .05″. The sample size also affects the judgment of the strength of the correlation. When reporting correlations in assignment 2, use the following table as guidance for labeling a correlation as weak/moderate/strong: Correlation Magnitude Negative r values Positive r values nonsignificant -.28 to .00 .00 to .28 weak -.55 to -.29 .29 to .55 moderate -.78 to -.56 .56 to .78 strong -1.00 to -.79 .79 to 1.00 Formatting: This assignment (Results and Discussion section) should be at least 2 full pages, and not longer than 5 pages (not counting your title page and references section). Use the same APA template as Writing Assignment 1 as a guide to format your paper. Assignments should be saved as a .docx, .rtf, or .pdf. Other formats will not be accepted in the dropbox. Write in paragraph form using full sentences and formal, academic, and scientific language (see below for guidance).
