Research Methods in Experimental Psychology
THINGS TO CONSIDER |
STEPS |
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INDEPENDENT VARIABLES |
DEPENDENT VARIABLES |
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CONTINUOUS VARIABLES |
CATEGORICAL VARIABLES |
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Sometimes called quantitative variables. Called Scale data in SPSS. Interval scales hold no true zero and may represent values below zero. Zero-point in an interval scale is arbitrary. For example, the temperature can be below 0 degrees Celsius and fall into negative temperatures.
Ratio never fall below zero, and 0 (zero) of the measurement indicates that there is none of that variable. For example, height and weight measure from 0 and above, but never fall below it.
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Sometimes called qualitative, discrete, or dichotomous variables. Called Ordinal and Nominal data in SPSS. Ordinal data that has a distinct order. There’s a meaning to the order.
Nominal data are distinct groups with no meaning to the order.
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| Description | Tutorial Video |
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| Basic Introduction to the SPSS Interface | |
| Creating and Coding Variables in SPSS | |
| Importing, Exporting & Saving other file-types in SPSS: Excel, CSV, Text | |
| Select IF Cases allows you to select subsets of cases. Unselected cases are not included in the analysis but remain in the dataset. You can use the unselected cases later in the session if you turn off filtering. | |
| Split File splits the data file into separate groups for analysis based on the values of one or more grouping variables. If you select multiple grouping variables, cases are grouped by each variable within categories of the preceding variable on the Groups Based On list. For example, if you select gender as the first grouping variable and minority as the second grouping variable, cases will be grouped by minority classification within each gender category. | |
| The Recode into Different Variables function allows you to reassign the values of existing variables into new values for a new variable. | |
| Computing variables in SPSS refers to computing with existing variables to create new variables.For example, you may want to add all of the ratings of several questions having to do with shyness to calculate a total shyness score. | |
| Calculate Age in Years from a Date of Birth variable in SPSS using the Date and Time Wizard. | |
| Syntax for Changing Variable Lower/Uppercase Spellings. In SPSS, it can be a headache if first names do not start with a capital letter and the remaining letters are not in lower case letters. Using this syntax will help correct this problem. | |
| Overview and basic rules for writing statistical results in APA format. Also, contains a brief demonstration on performing descriptive and frequency analysis in SPSS for demographic data and writing the results in APA format. | |
| Using SPSS to Create APA Format Tables | |
| Use this data to practice running analyses in SPSS. Give it a try! | Practice Dataset #1 (SPSS, 1,564kb) Practice Dataset #2 (SPSS, 47kb) Practice Dataset #3 (SPSS, 9kb) Practice Dataset #4 (Excel, 17kb) |
| Websites with downloadable datasets | U.S. Data and Statistics U.S. City Data U.S. Census Bureau of Labor Statistics The Government's Open Data Dataset Search Repository of Federal Enterprise Data Resources |
TEST |
VARIABLE TYPE | SPSS | EXCEL |
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| Frequencies | Categorical | ||
| Explore for Categorical Data | Categorical | ||
| Descriptives | Continuous | ||
| Explore for Continuous Data | Continuous | ||
| Z-scores | Continuous | ||
| One-Sample t-Test | Continuous |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
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| Chi-Square Goodness-of-Fit | Categorical |
TEST |
IV |
DV |
SPSS |
EXCEL |
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| Correlation | Continuous | Continuous | ||
| Simple Linear Regression | Continuous | Continuous |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
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| Chi-Square Test for Independence | Categorical (≥ 2 groups) | Categorical (≥ 2 groups) |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
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| Independent Samples T-Test | Categorical (Between-Subjects with 2 groups) | Continuous |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
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| Paired Samples T-Test | Categorical (Within-Subjects with 2 conditions) | Continuous |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
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| Independent Samples ANOVA | Categorical (Between-Subjects with ≥ 3 groups) | Continuous |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
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| Repeated Measures ANOVA | Categorical (Within-Subjects with ≥ 3 conditions) | Continuous |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
TEST |
IV 1 |
IV 2 |
DV |
SPSS |
EXCEL |
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| Factorial ANOVA | Categorical (Between-Subjects) | Categorical (Between-Subjects) | Continuous | ||
| Mixed Factorial ANOVA | Categorical (Within-Subjects) | Categorical (Between-Subjects) | Continuous |
With Writing Results in APA Format |
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| ANCOVA | Categorical | Categorical or Continuous (a Controlled Variable) | Continuous | ||
| MANOVA | Categorical (≥ 1) | Continuous (≥ 2) | |||
| MANCOVA | Categorical (≥ 1) | Categorical (a Controlled Variable) | Continuous (≥ 2) | ||
| Multiple Regression | Continuous (≥ 2) | Continuous | |||
| Stepwise Multiple Regression | Continuous | Continuous or Categorical | Continuous | ||
| Hierarchical Regression | Continuous | Continuous or Categorical | Continuous |
(Difference btwn Stepwise & Hierarchical Regression (pdf 118 kb)) |
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| Logistic Regression | Continuous (≥ 1) | Categorical (≥ 1) | Categorical (2 groups) | ||
| Multinomial Logistic Regression | Continuous (≥ 1) | Categorical (≥ 1) | Categorical (≥ 3 groups) | ||
| Loglinear Regression | Categorical | Categorical | Categorical |
| Description | Tutorial Video |
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| Class demonstration on downloading, cleaning, coding, and statistically analyzing survey data in SPSS. | |
| Reliability Analysis: Cronbach's alpha is the most common measure of internal consistency ("reliability"). It is most commonly used when you have multiple Likert questions in a survey/questionnaire that form a scale and you wish to determine if the scale is reliable. | |
| Using Regression in SPSS to perform Mediation Analyses. | |
| Using Regression in SPSS to perform Moderation Analyses. | |
| Path Analysis/Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) |
