PSY2PRM Assessment Answers

Data

Electronic gaming (pokies) is a popular gambling pursuit. The return rate is about 85c for every dollar gambled, and there are many ways by which this payout rate can be achieved (Great for the pokie owner obviously). One could program the machine to deliver many small wins or a few big wins within a very large set of spins.

Scenario:A pokie machine manufacturer hired you, a psychologist, to find out whether many small wins or a few big wins are more exciting to the gambler. According to the Small-Win payout theory, many small wins would be more effective in keeping the level of excitement elevated (so people keep playing). On the other hand, according to the Big-Win payout theory, a few big wins could be more exciting and reinforcing than many small wins which may be viewed as boring.

The manufacturer also thinks that women might prefer many small wins to a few big wins but men might prefer a few big wins too many small wins. As such, the manufacturer also wants to know if there are gender differences in people's excitement levels to these two different payout schedules. If there is a gender difference, then the manufacturer could build electronic gaming machines, or even the kinds of games, that appeal specifically to men and women.

So, you went to the dark side (by trying to help an entrepreneur extract $ from people!) and designed an experiment with 80 participants divided into four equal groups.

Group 1 is 20 men who received many small wins.Group 2 is 20 men who received a few big wins.Group 3 is 20 women who received many small wins.Group 4 is 20 women who received a few big wins.

You think that men like to play pokies just as much as women but, just in case, you ask all participants to rate how much they like the pokies (10-point Likert scale named RATING- 0= not at all to 10 = enormously). All participants started with 1000 credits on a 5c machine and had to play for 200 spins/turns on two specially programmed versions of the game (many small wins, a few big wins) in which the outcome is identical at the end of the 200 spins (say, 850 credits remaining).

Heart rate was recorded at one-minute intervals and, then averaged across the session, to be used as a score of excitement, where a higher averaged heart rate score is assumed to indicate a higher level of excitement.

This data is given in an SPSS data file called Assigment2.sav in the PRM Assignment folder on LMS. Follow the instructions below to create a dataset that is unique to your student id number.

1. On LMS, open the Assignment2.sav file.
2. On LMS, open SPSS syntax for creating my own data.sps.
3. In the SPSS SYNTAX Window, change the number in the SET SEED command from 12345678 to your Student ID.
4. In the SPSS SYNTAX Window, highlight all commands up to and including the EXECUTE command and click RUN. This syntax generates a set of data unique to your Student ID, trims extreme data, and rounds data to whole numbers.
5. Finally, save your data now (in your own area, say JaneDoe Assignment2.sav) and proceed with your statistical analysis.

QUESTION. What test will you use to check your assumption that the sample of men and women do not differ in how much they like to play the pokies?

QUESTION. What were the results when you compared these means?

QUESTION. Let us say your assumption is correct, and you proceed to an analysis of excitement. Report tests of the assumptions that:(a) Heart rate (HR) scores are normally distributed within each of the four groups.(b) The variances of HR are homogeneous between the groups.

QUESTION. In regard to descriptive statistics: Construct, in APA format, a table of sample sizes, means, and standard deviations of HR for each group.

QUESTION. Plot a bar chart with 95% CI, in APA format, of the mean HR of each group.

QUESTION. (a) Report the test that you have selected, naming the independent and dependent variables.(b) Present the ANOVA summary table, in APA format.

QUESTION. (a) Report the results of the ANOVA, in APA format.(b) Report on posthoc comparisons between means.

Finally, you decided that a two-way design might be more appropriate to demonstrate the interaction between gender and payout; namely, that women find many small wins more exciting (i.e., higher heart rate) than a few big wins whereas the opposite is true for men.

QUESTION. (a) Report the test that you have selected, naming the independent and dependent variables.(b) Present the ANOVA summary table, in APA format.

QUESTION. Regardless of the interaction result (whether significant or not), conduct simple main effects analyses for gender within each payout and report on these effects.

QUESTION. Regardless of the interaction result (whether significant or not), conduct simple main effects analyses for payout within each gender and report on these effects.