The assessments in this course build upon each other, so you are strongly encouraged to complete them in sequence.
The study of statistics can be intimidating, but statistics are all around you and are closely related to the activities you will do as a professional. Whether you venture into research or clinical practice or another field that uses data, you need to be able to understand statistics so you can apply them to your profession. How will you do that? It can be through an individual patient’s assessment, an assessment of your overall practices, or simply analyzing trends in others’ behaviors. Perhaps you need to use statistics to determine the impact of a certain treatment, or maybe you piloted a new type of therapy and want to see how it impacted your patients with a diagnosis.
The great thing about statistics is that it uses numbers. Sometimes, when conducting research, there may be bias or inaccuracies. However, with numbers, you have a concrete way to examine your practice.
This assessment will get you started with measures of central tendency, graphic displays of data, and becoming familiar with your data sets. You’ll also begin to consider careers related to statistics and data analysis.
Note: The assessments in this course build upon each other, so you are strongly encouraged to complete them in sequence.
Before you begin the assessment, complete the following:
Step 1: Ensure JASP is installed and set up on your computer.
Step 2: Choose the variables you will be working with from the chart below. You will choose one variable from List A and one variable from List B.
List A
Choose ONE variable from this list “A”
List B
Choose ONE variable from this list “B”
RACLIVE. Have other race living in neighborhood. This is a Yes/No question asking respondents if they live in a neighborhood with people of another race. HAPPY. General happiness. This question asks the respondents to rate how happy they are (small Likert scale).
NEWS. How often does respondent read newspaper. This question asks respondents to rate how often they read the newspaper (Likert scale). LIFE. If life is exciting or dull. This question asks respondents to rate their life as exciting, routine, or dull (similar to a Likert scale).
WWWHR. Internet hours per week. This question asks respondents to share how many hours in a week they use the internet for non-email activities. MNTLHLTH. Days of poor mental health past 30 days. This question asks respondents how many days of poor mental health they’ve had in the past 30 days.
DEPRESS. Told have depression. This is a Yes/No question asking respondents if they have been told they have depression. Keep JASP, your textbook, and Statistical Analysis in JASP: A Guide for Students open when working on your worksheet.
Read, don’t skim, each part of the worksheet. The text will often help you find the answer.
Do each step one at a time. Running statistical tests requires paying attention to details. One wrong setting in JASP can result in getting poor or wrong results. It’s not difficult if you go step by step. It just needs a bit of patience and to go a little slower than normal.
Do the entire worksheet (it’s long).
When you are done, scroll to the very end of the document. Then scroll up slowly to double-check that you have an answer in each box. Going in reverse (from the end to the beginning) is often the best way to spot something you overlooked earlier.
successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
Competency 2: Apply statistical analyses to problems in the social sciences.
Describe key statistical concepts.
Determine data type.
Explain the use of a mean with different types of variables.
Competency 4: Plan career contingencies based on accurate self-assessment of abilities, achievement, motivation, and work habits as they relate to statistics.
Discover career contingencies based on accurate self-assessment of abilities, achievement, motivation, and work habits.
Competency 6: Communicate quantitative data in statistics, graphs, tables, and in common language.
Communicate statistical data in graphs and tables.
