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YOU MUST PROVIDE 2 REPORTS THAT DESCRIBE A CORRELATION STUDY MUST…
YOU MUST PROVIDE 2 REPORTS THAT DESCRIBE A CORRELATION STUDY
MUST FIND STUDIES ON: (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news)
PLEASE FOLLOW ALL STEPS
Now you are ready to begin the assignment. You must visit The Latest Research News (https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news) on the Association for Psychological Science website, and identify two reports that describe a correlational study.
The first part of this task is not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes, the research methods used in the study are not immediately apparent. You may have to do some digging to determine if the study used a correlational design. A few hints that might help are:
– Type “correlation” into the Search box at the top of the page.
– If an article has an independent and dependent variable, it is an experiment, not a correlational study.
– Look for the word “correlation” or “association” in the article title.
For further clarification, review your understanding of the differences between correlations and experiments in Christie Napa Scollon’s Research Designs from the Noba Project website and Richard E. Nisbett’s The Superiority of Experiments over Correlations from the Coursera website.
For both of the reports you find, click on the link to the full news story, which will take you to a different website, and carefully read the story. At the bottom of the page, you will find the reference to the original study. You can then apply your knowledge of database searching through the TRU library (e.g., PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, etc.) to find the original article. You” need to be able to read the original article, not just the abstract.
You will have the opportunity to read about the same piece of research in two sources: the non-scholarly write-up written for the press on the APS website and the original scholarly article, which contains all of the details. Use these two sources to respond to the following five questions for each study:
First, provide the references for both the news story on the website of the Association for Psychological Science and the scholarly source for the original article found on PsycARTICLES, Google Scholar, and so on. Copy and paste the abstract from the academic journal (not the news story) into your assignment.
Please give website addresses as well. Next, clearly describe one correlational result reported in the study. Your description should include operational definitions of the variables involved as well as the direction and strength of the correlation. The scholarly article will report the actual correlation value, which is very useful because it will help you visualize what the scatterplot will look like in the next question.
Draw and clearly label a scatterplot that illustrates this correlation using 10 data points. Use Magnusson’s interactive webpage Interpreting Correlations: An Interactive Visualization to guide your drawing (it will generate hypothetical data points that you can use). You can plug in the correlation value reported in the article to see what the scatterplot should look like. Important here is the angle of the line connecting the dots in your scatterplotmost psychology studies do not report perfect correlations! The main aim is to demonstrate that you understand and can apply a correlation to a plot.
Speculate about the three possible avenues of cause and effect: A could cause B, B could cause A, or a third variable C could cause both A and B. Which of these seems most plausible and why?
How do the researchers interpret this correlation? Do they explain the correlation in a particular causal direction?
Describe how you might be able to address the same question using a different nonexperimental research design. Your proposed study should use the same variables but should operationalize them differently. For example, if the present study operationalized “exercise” as the amount of time spent running each week, there are infinite other ways to operationalize exercise, such as time spent in a physically active job, number of times going to the gym per week, time spent walking each day, and so on.
Remember to answer all these questions also for the 2ND report that you have chosen.
Example – Do not use this study in Assignment
Practice reading and understanding correlational research by going to the Association for Psychological Website news story “Well son of a biscuit: swearing correlated with honesty”. First, read the news story and pay attention to what details are included and what questions you still have about the original research upon which it is based.
Then read the scholarly article upon which the news story is based. It will be immediately clear that the original article is much more challenging! Do not be put off by the technical languageunderstanding the gist of the article does not require great statistical knowledge. In Assignment 1 you practiced an approach to understanding scholarly articles that can be applied here. Work your way through each section until you can explain why the study was conducted, what related research had already been done, who made up the sample, what procedure was followed, the results (in words), and the authors’ interpretation of what the results mean in the real world.
An annotated guide to reading the original article, Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: the relationship between profanity and honesty (annotated), is available; see the comments at various places within the article that highlight points to pay particular attention to or clarify details of the authors’ report. You might choose to read the article first without looking at the annotated comments, and then again with the comments and compare your understanding.
Once you have completed this exercise, ask yourself the following questions (these are identical to the questions you will respond to in Assignment 2):
Clearly describe one correlational result reported in the study. Make sure you understand and describe the operational defintions of the variables. Your description should include the variables involved as well as the direction and strength of the correlation. The scholarly article will report the actual correlation valuethis is very useful because it will help you visualize what the scatterplot will look like in the next question.
Draw and clearly label a scatterplot that illustrates this correlation using 10 data points. Use the Interpreting Correlations interactive visualization to guide your drawingyou can plug in the correlation value reported in the article to see what the scatterplot should look like. Important here is the angle of the line connecting the dots in your scatterplotmost psychology studies do NOT report perfect correlations! The main aim is to demonstrate that you understand and can apply a correlation to a plot.
Speculate about the three possible avenues of cause and effect outlined above. Which of these seems most plausible and why?
How do the researchers interpret this correlation? Do they explain the correlation in a particular causal direction?
Describe how you might be able to address the same question using a different non-experimental research design. Your proposed study should use the same variables but should operationalize them differentlyfor example, if the present study operationalized “exercise” as the amount of time spent running each week, there are infinite other ways to operationalize exercise, such time spent in a physically active job, number of times going to the gym per week, time spent walking each day, and so on.
