PSYCHOL-2004 Doing Research in Psychology Assessment Answers

Research Report Instructions

The major assessment in this course requires students to complete a modified research report, based on data collected by students and provided in class. Specifically, students will need to construct appropriate aims and hypotheses according to the data available, complete a methods section, conduct analyses and report the results, as well as provide a short conclusion that summarises the outcome of the results in relation to the initial hypotheses, as well as providing a succinct interpretation of the results overall. These are fundamental skills in Psychology and will be built upon in other courses throughout your degree.

The topic

The broad topic for the research report in 2022 is the relationship between connectedness to nature, social connectedness, and anxiety. There is a range of demographic measures also provided, and short definitions long with information about the scale of each variable are given below. Remember, it is up to individual students to construct their own hypotheses for their respective reports. Further details about the survey, including general methods and procedures, are provided in a separate document to assist with the writing of reports.

The variables provided:

1. id this is just an arbitrary id number for each participant. You should note that as some cases have been removed the id numbers do not run consecutively for the full range (numbers classed as characters, with values referring to the participant)
2. age a person's age (numeric; measured in years)
3. gender a person's self-reported gender (factor, with two levels; male, female)
4. born Aust whether a person was born in Australia, or elsewhere (the data is dummy coded so that 1 = yes and 2 = no)
5. ethnicity what ethnicity the participant identifies as, from the categories provided (factor, with three levels; Caucasian, Asian, and Other)
6. child Home whether the person spent the majority of their childhood in an urban or rural area (character variable; Urban, Rural)
7. adult Home whether the person currently lives in an urban or rural area (character variable; Urban, Rural)
8. nature Connect is the total score from the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) which measures an individual's emotional and experiential response to nature. Higher scores indicate a higher level of connection to nature (numeric; scores from 1 to 5 )
9. social this is the total score from the Social Connectedness Scale (Revised), which assesses the degree to which an individual feels connected to others. Higher scores indicate greater social connectedness (numeric; scores from 20 to 120)
10. anxiety this is the total score from the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7), which provides a measure of general anxiety symptoms. Higher scores indicate greater symptoms of anxiety (numeric; scores from 0 to 21)

The task

Your task for this assessment is to construct a series of aims and hypotheses based on the above data that also utilize specific statistical tests that we cover in class. Then, you are to run the relevant statistical analyses that test your hypotheses and report the findings in a modified research report (instructions below). We will cover the relevant skills sequentially throughout the course.

The hypotheses and statistical tests you choose are up to you. You can also manipulate the data to suit your aims. However, they will need to address the following types of analyses in order to satisfy the full requirements of the assessment:

1. 1. You should construct at least one hypothesis and corresponding statistical test that compares two groups on a particular outcome.
2. You should construct at least one hypothesis and corresponding statistical test that compares more than two groups on a particular outcome.
3. Finally, you should construct at least one hypothesis and corresponding statistical test that models the relationship between two (or more) non-categorical (i.e. numeric or integer) variables.

Constructing more than three hypotheses and corresponding statistical analyses does not guarantee a higher grade, however, you may include more than three in order to more fully address the aims you present. More than five separate hypotheses and corresponding statistical analyses are discouraged, and this is beyond the intended scope of the assignment.