Research Methods Quiz

A teacher wants to compare the reading comprehension skills of children with learning difficulties and children without learning difficulties. Which statistical test should she use to make this comparison?

• Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)

• Regression

• t-test

• p-test

On which of the following cases would an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) be useful?

• Comparing the language acquisition skills of two different groups

• Finding the average score of a group in a Spanish test

• Testing whether girls enjoyed hearing a certain story read aloud

• Testing whether children in Iowa, California, and New York have different learning skills

A teacher wants to compare children of high, medium, and low family incomes on their satisfaction with the school lunch program. Which statistical test should be used to make this comparison?

• p-test

• ANOVA

• t-test

• descriptive

A researcher asks a group of students to complete a survey that measures maturity. She finds that the average score for girls is higher than the average score for boys, with a p-value of 0.03. What should she conclude from this p-value?

• There's a three percent chance that the scores in the study are due to random chance.

• Three percent of the girls are more mature than the boys, on average.

• Ninety-three percent of the girls are more mature than the boys, on average.

• There's a ninety-three percent chance that the scores in the study are due to random chance.

Inferential statistics are important to a study because they allow researchers to _____.

• test whether there is a better hypothesis than the one they were using

• make sure the data rejects all previous hypotheses

• draw conclusions from the descriptive statistics data

• make sure the data supports their hypothesis

For the results of a study to be thought to support a hypothesis, researchers must prove that the results have _____.

• both descriptive and inferential statistics

• standard deviation

• central tendency

• statistical significance

Which of the following is the median of the set of data below?

2, 5, 1, 7, 6, 5, 2, 8, 4

• 2

• 5

• 8

• 4

Which of the following is NOT a step in calculating the variance?

• Subtract the mean from each data value.

• Divide the sum of the squares by the mean.

• Calculate the mean.

• Square each of the values then find the sum of the squares

Which of the following is NOT a step in calculating the variance?

• Subtract the mean from each data value.

• Divide the sum of the squares by the mean.

• Calculate the mean.

• Square each of the values then find the sum of the squares

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

• Descriptive statistics describe how we can generalize our study data to the general population

• Measures of dispersion describe how spread out data are.

• Inferential statistics allow us to draw conclusions from our data set to the general population.

• Measures of central tendency use a single value to describe the center of a data set.