Project 1

Social psychologists Rind & Bordia (1996) investigated whether or not drawing a happy face on customers’ checks increased the amount of tips received by a waitress at an upscale restaurant on a university campus. During the lunch hour a waitress drew a happy, smiling face on the checks of a random half of her customers. The remaining half of the customers received a check with no drawing.

The tip percentages for the control group (no happy face) are as follows:

The tip percentages for the experimental group (happy face) are as follows:

You are to perform a descriptive analysis of the data, answering each of the questions below. For short-answer questions, be brief. However, you must give enough detail to justify your answers. Single-sentence responses will generally not suffice, but do not exceed a paragraph for any given answer.

Submit three items to your teacher: 1) your typed responses to all questions, 2) your calculations (all hand calculations and print-outs of your Excel data analyses), 3) the grading sheet found on the last page of this handout.

You may use the equation editor feature of your word processing to complete the calculations.

Preliminary Questions:

1. What type of research question (i.e., descriptive, comparative, relationship) is being asked by the researchers? Briefly explain your answer.
2. What were the independent and dependent variables in the study?
3. What is the level of measurement for both the independent and dependent variables?

4. Before performing data analyses, make a prediction about the pattern of results you expect to see and why. That is, which condition do you think will result in the highest percentage of tips, on average? Why? Note: don’t base your prediction on the data itself, rather your expectations going into the study. That is, before you collect any data, what would you expect to see and why ?

Hand Calculations:

You must show your work, and it must be legible.

5. Calculate the mean, median, and mode for the experimental group.

6. Examine the values for the mean and the median. Based on these values, what shape of distribution would you expect to see? Briefly explain your rationale.

7. Calculate the sample range and standard deviation for the experimental group (use the computational formula for a sample!).

8. Suppose you had to explain the standard deviation value in the previous question to someone who has not taken a statistics course. In a sentence or two, write your explanation.

9. How would you characterize the variability of the tips? That is, do you feel the variability is high, moderate, or low? Briefly explain your rationale.

Data Analyses:

10. Enter the data above into Excel. You will enter in two the data in two columns. See the screen shot of the Excel data entry spreadsheet below and use this as a model.

11. Obtain descriptive statistics (mean, median, standard deviation, range, skewness, and kurtosis) separately for both the experimental and control groups; see the attached screen shots . To do this:

You will need to select a new cell for each statistic and use the formula function:

Obtain a frequency distribution chart (not table) for both variables. Use the frequency distribution chart to screen your data for entry errors. Did you find any "odd" values that needed to be corrected?

Final Interpretations:

13. Compare your hand calculations (your answers to questions #5 and #7) to the Excel results you found for question #11. Were they correct? (Do the 2 sets of answers match? If not, find your mistake and correct it).

14. Examine the frequency distribution chart (#12) for the experimental group . What shape best characterizes the distribution? That is, if you believe the distribution is skewed, 1.) What information from the frequency distribution backs up your claim? Also, 2.) Do your conclusions match your predictions in #6 above?

15. If you had to report central tendency for the experimental group, which statistic(s) is/are the most appropriate? Explain your rationale, incorporating a discussion of level of measurement and distribution shape into your answer.

16. Compare the means for the two experimental groups. Does the pattern of mean differences match your predictions in #4 above? From simply a descriptive standpoint, how would you characterize the magnitude of the difference in means (e.g., small, medium, large) between the treatment/experimental and control groups? Explain your rationale.

Price: $23.32

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 12 pages, 1132 words and 6 charts.
Deliverable: Word Document