Psychology: Introduction to Research Methods Assignment Solutions

This document presents solutions to a research methods assignment in psychology, addressing a range of research questions and statistical analyses. The assignment covers topics such as hypothesis formulation, including null and alternative hypotheses, and the application of various statistical tests like t-tests, ANOVA, regression, and correlation analysis. It explores different experimental designs, including within-subjects and between-groups designs, and discusses the interpretation of statistical results, including descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, and the use of histograms and box plots. The solutions also involve identifying confounding variables, interpreting statistical output, and drawing conclusions based on the results of different statistical tests. The assignment covers a wide range of research scenarios, including studies on mental health, advertising, driving performance, mindfulness, pain perception, brain training, bullying, and the impact of video games on reaction time, demonstrating a strong understanding of research methodology.

Introduction to Research Methods

Question
number Answer
1
H0: Participants with the mental health problems recall both the depression & non-depression related words.
H1: Participants with the mental health problems recall more depression related words.
2 The designed experimental hypothesis was one-tailed test also called directional test.
3 Depression & anxiety order
4 Recall capabilities
5 Interval data that can be expressed in values
6 Within subjects design in which each and every participants has been exposed for the each and every treatment (Keller, 2016).
7
Confounding variable is a variable that presents correlation between independent & dependent variable here time may be a confounding
variable.
8
H0: There is no impact of roadside advertisement on people’s driving performance.
H1: Roadside advertisement has a significant impact on the people’s driving performance.
9 It was a two-tailed means non-directional experimental hypothesis.
10 Taboo or risqué advertisement
11 Cognitive tunnelling & driving performance
12 Ordinal category data (Terrible, poor, fair, good and excellent)

13
The experiment applied between group design, also called independent design because there were two different groups, one is neutral
word and emotionally charged taboo swear words.
14
Time devoted to look the advertisement may be an confounding variable because higher the time devoted to the advertisement maximize
the chance of impairing driving performance or vice-versa (Aczel & Sounderpandian, 2002).
15 Descriptive statistics: This statistical tool assists business analysts to summarize the big or huge quantum of data set into meaningful
information by presenting key summary statistics. It is broadly classified into two that are central tendency measures and measurement
of dispersion (Black & et.al., 2013). In this, central tendency measures comprises mean, mode and median, wherein mean represents
average, mode indicates value that has greatest frequency whilst median presents the value that is equal to 50% and divide the series into
two parts. However, dispersion measures the spread of each and every value from the average value measured by range, variance &
standard deviation.

(ii)

16 Interpretations: From the results derived above, it can be seen that mindfulness intervention group has founded highest mean age of
57.73 at a confidence interval of 53.42 and 62.03. However, other groups, people with no treatment, cognitive behavioural therapy and
anti-depressant medication have founded a mean age of 56.09, 50.18 & 31.18 years. Thus, from the results, it is clear that average age of
the people from the 4th group is founded lowest. However, on the other side, range is reported highest for the CBT group to 49 in
comparison to the 1st, 3rd and 4th group, which had reported a range of 21, 24 & 24 respectively. It showcase that CBT Group’s
participants age highly differ or spreaded (Aad & et.al., 2014). Although range is the simplest technique still, it cannot be considered as
the best technique for the dispersion measurement whilst standard deviation provides true results. Descriptive statistics results founded
highest value of standard deviation for the participants with the CBT applied to 16.510 which demonstrates that age group of each &
every participants involved in this group is scattered from the average age of 50.18 years (Siegel, 2016). In contrast, other groups
reported lower spreaders because their standard deviation has been measured at 6.395, 6.405 & 7.744 respectively.

Interpretations: Looking to the frequency results, it can be seen that in the group under no treatment (controlled condition), 9 (81.8%)
and 2(18.2%) female participants has been involved in the investigation. However, participants with CBT, Mindfulness intervention &
anti-depressant medication involved male to 2(18.2%), 3(27.3%) and 3(27.3%) whereas female participants were founded to 9(81.8%),
8(72.7%) and 8(72.7%) respectively .
17 Histogram:

Interpretation; The above histogram reflects that data set regarding male participant visualized normal distribution whilst for female, it
is founded skewed.

18

Interpretation: Above results presents that for the male participants, sig value under both the K-S and S-W test is founded to 0.200 and
0.761 above 0.05 which clearly presents that data has been drawn from the normally distribution population. However, for the female,
the values were reported to 0.044 and 0.002 below 0.05 indicates that it is not normally distributed.
19 Two box plots for the male and female

Figure 1 Box plot for the male