C-2. 2014

Info for questions 1-2: We want to examine whether animal assisted therapy can help children with cerebral palsy (pet therapy vs therapy without animals), and whether this effect is modulated by gender. We recruited 40 children with cerebral palsy (20 boys and 20 girls), from Valencia and Alicante. At random, 20 individuals (with the logic restriction: 10 boys and 10 girls) received animal assisted therapy for 10 weeks, and the other 20 individuals received similar therapy but without animals (using toys) for 10 weeks. We measured the level of irritability (on a scale of 1 to 7) of children after treatment.

Question 1:

a) Which are the independent and dependent variables?

b) Is this an experiment or a quasi-experiment? Explain your answer

Question 2:

a) If we want to organize the data to compute statistics with, say, SPSS, how many rows and columns are necessary? (and why)

b) Do you think it would be advisable to measure the degree of irritability of the children at some other time? Explain your answer.

Info for Questions 3-4: We have data from 40 high-school students in three subtests of Language. We also have gender, whether they go to public or private school, a measure of executive function (i.e., attention; more score, the better executive function), time spent watching TV per day (in minutes), and if whether they have 3G/4G in their cell phones. The file is in http://www.uv.es/mperea/atencion.sav

Question 3.

Are there any differences in executive function depending of whether they have (or not) 3G / 4G? Look at the box and whisker diagram. Justify briefly your the conclusions. (Copy / paste the SPSS output as well.)

Question 4.

First off, select only students of private/concerted schools. Indicate a graph for variable "gender". Copy / paste this graph and indicate the conclusions (i.e., are there more boys than girls or vice versa?).

C-1. 2014

Statement for questions 1-2: We want to examine whether animal assisted therapy (with animals vs. with toys) can help children with autism spectrum. We recruited 30 children with autism from Valencia and Alicante. The Valencia participants received a horse-assisted therapy for 10 weeks, and the Alicante participants received a similar therapy but without animals (using toys in place) for 10 weeks. We measured the level of irritability (on a scale of 1 to 7) and the level of socailibty (on a scale from 1 to 7) of children after treatment.

Question 1:

a) Which are the independent and dependent variables?

b) If we want to organize the data to compute statistics with, say, SPSS, how many rows and columns are necessary? (and why)

Question 2:

a) Is an experiment or a quasi-experiment? Explain your answer

b) Would it have been desirable to obtain the degree of irritability (and sociability) of children before starting treatment? Justify your answer

Question 3.

Create the variable "average_grades" in SPSS, averaging the 3 exams of Language. Do you see differences between the level of language depending on the school type? Have a look at the box and whiskers diagram and indicate the appropriate statistical indexes (central tendency and variability, in particular). Discuss the findings in one or two sentences. (Copy / paste the data from SPSS.)

Question 4.

We want to have the score of "executive function" (remember, the more score, the better executive function) that leaves below approximately 10% of cases, since children with lower scores may suffer attentional problems in class. What is the value? (Copy / paste the data in the file.)

B-1 2014

Statement for questions 1 and 2: We want to examine whether the taste of the paella (frozen paella) differs on a plane in the air or at the airport, and whether this effect is modulated by the fact of the participants being or not professional chefs. We recruited 60 people (30 professional chefs, 30 non-experts). Randomly, 30 participants (half of them cooks) ate the paella on a plane at a local airport, while the other half of participants ate the paella on a flight from Valencia to Lisbon. The silverware, dishes, etc had always the same characteristics. All participants, after eating the paella had to evaluate the intensity of flavor of paella (scale from 1 to 10) and the perceived quality of the paella (scale from 1 to 10)

Question 1:

a) Which are the independent and dependent variables?

b) Is this an experiment or a quasi-experiment? Explain your answer

Question 2:

a) If we want to organize the data to compute statistics with, say, SPSS, how many rows and columns are necessary? (and why)

b) Has there been any independent variables manipulated "within-subjects" (ie, all subjects go through all levels of the independent variable)? And if "no", how we could have done any within-subject manipulation? Describe the manipulation briefly.

Question 3.

Let’s dichotomize the variable "time watching TV per day" using two levels: 1 = up to 50 minutes inclusive (label: "low"), and 2 = 51 or more minutes (label: "high"). The name of this new variable can be "time_TV_groups". Are there differences in executive function depending on watching TV? Look at the box and whisker diagram and indicate the conclusions in one or two sentences. (Copy / paste the output of SPSS.)

Question 4.

Indicate the result of four measures of central tendency for the variable "executive function". Copy / Paste the output of SPSS.

B-2, 2014

Statement for questions 1 and 2: We want to examine whether the size of a dessert dish influences the feeling of being satiated in people with bulimia (i.e., an eating disorder). We recruited 20 people with bulimia. There were two sessions. All participants had to eat a similar dessert, with the difference that in a session the dish was served in a large plate, and in the other session another day the dish was served in a small plate. The order small-large vs. large-small was counterbalanced at random, half of the participants went from small to large, and the other went from large to small). After eating the dessert, in each of the two sessions, participants had to indicate the degree of satiation on a 1-10 scale.

Question 1:

a) Which are the independent and dependent variables?

b) Is this an experiment or a quasi-experiment? Explain your answer

Question 2:

a) If we want to organize the data to compute statistics with, say, SPSS, how many rows and columns are necessary? (and why)

b) Let’s assume the that data showed that the feeling of being satiated was substantially higher when the plate was small than when the plate was big Indicates a potential next step in the investigation. (Possible clue: Any other groups to be included?)

Question 3.

Let’s dichotomize the variable "executive function" in two levels: 1 = up to 5 (label: "low"), and 2 = 6 or more (label: "high"). The name of this new variable can be "attention_groups". Are there differences in the grade of “historia” (history) depending on executive function? Look at the box and whisker diagram and indicate the conclusions in one or two sentences. (Copy / paste the output of SPSS.)

Question 4.

Let’s assume that that the language teacher made a mistake when correcting the responses in each of the three exams, and that in fact, every student should have an extra 0.5 points. Indicate the correct grade (“grade_language_ok”) for the average of the three exams. And now the question: which data point in “grade_language_ok” leaves below it approximately 50% of the cases? (Copy / Paste from SPSS).