Applied Psychology Research Methods

Applied Psychology Research Methods

Different parts of the world have experienced catastrophic droughts over the past 10 years. Imagine you are studying the amount of rainfall received over a set period of time in order to help an area find solutions during times of water shortage. You might collect data on rainfall patterns on a monthly basis for a year. Then, chart your data to provide a graphical image of monthly rainfall rates. The resulting histogram indicates a range of rainfall.

This week, you will generate your own histograms using data from the Study Habits dataset provided in the Learning Resources.

To Prepare:

Review the Learning Resources Salkind course text and the document Working With Datasets Job Aid for information about how to complete the tasks identified in the To Prepare and Post activities.
Practice creating histograms using the Quick Guide Data Set “Q55. HISTOGRAM.xlsx” and the Check Your Understanding Data Sets “QS55a” and “QS55b”.
Choose a continuous variable from the Study Habits dataset and use Excel to create a histogram of this variable. Note: The dataset contains missing data. For this Discussion, do not clean the missing data.
Review the Working With Datasets Job Aid for instructions on “How to Post a Visual Display to the Discussion Board”, as you cannot copy and paste the histogram directly into the Discussion Board.
By Day 4 (Post First)
Post your histogram and interpret it in terms of normality. Explain your reasoning. Note: Refer to the Learning Resources for assistance.

Johnson, R. B., & Christensen, L. B. (2020). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Chapter 2, “Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Research” (pp. 37–45)
Chapter 7, “Standardized Measurement and Assessment” (pp. 155–168)
Chapter 10, “Sampling in Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Research”
Sample Size Table (pp. 256–257) (review)
Salkind, N. (2016). Excel Statistics: A Quick Guide (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Excel Quickguide 55, “The Histogram Tool” (pp. 123–124)