The American Psychological Association (2015) gathered data from almost 1000 psychology doctoral programs in the United States. If a school offered, say, four different psychology doctorates, each would be counted separately. The table below includes overall acceptance rates for each of 10 different types of psychology doctorates.

Psychology subfield ............................................................... Acceptance rate
Clinical psychology ............................................................................ 12.0%
Cognitive psychology ........................................................................ 10.9%
Counseling psychology ..................................................................... 11.0%
Developmental psychology .............................................................. 14.1%
Experimental psychology ................................................................. 12.7%
Industrial/organizational psychology ............................................. 14.6%
Neuroscience .................................................................................... 10.7%
School psychology ............................................................................ 29.0%
Social psychology ............................................................................... 7.0%
Other applied psychology ............................................................... 25.2%

a. What is the independent variable in this example? Is it nominal or scale? If nominal, what are the levels? If scale, what are the units and what are the minimum and maximum values?

b. What is the dependent variable in this example? Is it nominal or scale? If nominal, what are the levels? If scale, what are the units and what are the minimum and maximum values?

c. Construct a bar graph of these data, with one bar for each of the types of psychology doctoral programs, using the default options in your computer software.

d. Construct a second bar graph of these data, but change the defaults to satisfy the guidelines for graphs discussed in this chapter. Aim for simplicity and clarity.

e. Cite at least one research question that you might want to explore next. Your research question should grow out of these data.

f. Explain how these data could be presented as a pictorial graph. (Note that you do not have to construct such a graph.) What kind of picture could you use? What would it look like?

g. What are the potential pitfalls of a pictorial graph? Why is a bar chart usually a better choice?