I have a set of sample data for the following scenario already entered into SPSS
ID: 3171361 • Letter: I
Question
I have a set of sample data for the following scenario already entered into SPSS:
You are the director of Institutional Research at a small state university and you have been given the task of gathering information for the dean of the School of Education regarding the performance of their undergraduate students on the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Data on six variables were collected: gender, overall grade point average (GPA), major GPA, GRE scores in major area, GRE quantitative, GRE verbal, and type of preparation programs. The university is dedicated to maximize student success on the GRE. The university has established five different options for students to prepare for the GREs: option 1 = completely online asynchronous prep course, 2 = completely online synchronous prep course, 3 = complete a hybrid prep course with a combination of online and face to face; 4 = complete a traditional instructor led prep course, and 5 = self-paced paper based prep course.
The dean has simply asked you, “Tell me what works best and for whom?” You decide to establish a pilot study with 50 randomly selected general science education seniors to determine the details of the methodology as well as to provide some initial data and corresponding results to learn if the research plan meets the dean’s needs.
I have the following research question and hypotheses:
Q1. Which preparation program best prepares females for the GRE?
H0: All the 5 alternative GRE preparations are similar
Ha: At least one of the alternatives is different from the others.
I conducted an ANOVA in SPSS with the output below.
ANOVA
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
F
Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
5.853
23
.254
1.168
.349
Within Groups
5.667
26
.218
Total
11.520
49
Preparation Approach
Between Groups
78.583
23
3.417
4.148
.000
Within Groups
21.417
26
.824
Total
100.000
49
Based on the results from the ANOVA, how do I tell which preparation program or programs best prepare females for the GRE, and how do I report that answer in APA?
ANOVA
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
F
Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
5.853
23
.254
1.168
.349
Within Groups
5.667
26
.218
Total
11.520
49
Preparation Approach
Between Groups
78.583
23
3.417
4.148
.000
Within Groups
21.417
26
.824
Total
100.000
49
Explanation / Answer
Basically you have a 2 way ANOVA with "Gender" and "Preparation Approach" as the 2 factors.
factor->"Gender" - levels "male" & "female"
factor->"Preparation Approach" - levels 1 through 5.
The ANOVA table you have provided, only tests the Significance of the Main Effects, which shows that Gender is insignifact ( p value > 0.05) and preparation approach is significant (p-value <0.05) .
The correct procedure is you first check for the significance of interaction effects, ie Gender x Preparation Approach, if the interaction effects are insignificant then you proceed to check for the Main effects.
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