Testing Hypotheses for Means

Using SPSS software

--Independent sample t test

--Paired sample t test

--One sample t test

Scenarios:

1. As an international development researcher, you would like to know African Citizen's perceptions about current levels of democracy. Your working hypothesis is that a series of reforms have increased African views of the level of democracy today. You do not have a good research design to compare attitudes before and after the reforms, but know that leaders and development experts would like to see a value of 6, on the scale of 1-10. Using the data from the 2015 Afrobarometer, determine whether perceptions about current levels of democracy statistically differ from a value of 6. Please provide: a style paragraph statement that furnishes an answer to this question, note the relevant statistics, comment on meaningfulness and include your relevant SPSS output.

2. As an international development researcher, you have already tested whether perceptions about the current levels of democracy differ from a value of 6. Given recent social change movements in North Africa, you now want to determine whether there is a statistical difference in these perceptions between North Africa and Southern Africa. Using the data from the 2015 Afrobarometer, please provide: a paragraph statement that furnishes an answer to this question, note the relevant statistics, comment on meaningfulness, and include your relevant SPSS output.

3. As an educational researcher, would like to know whether high school student's perceptions about mathematical utility changed between their freshman and senior year. Each respondent is asked the same series of questions about the utility of mathematics in their future during their freshman and senior year. These questions are combined to form one variable of mathematical utility; higher values indicate higher levels of mathematical utility. Using the High School Longitudinal Survey, please provide: a paragraph statement that furnishes an answer to this question, note the relevant statistics, comment on meaningfulness, and include your relevant SPSS output

Based on each of the three research scenarios provided, open the High School Longitudinal Study dataset or the Afrobarometer dataset from this week's Learning Resources using SPSS software, then choose and run the appropriate t test.

Once you perform your t test analyses, review Chapter 11 of the Wagner text to understand how to copy and paste your output into your Word document.

A analysis of your t test results for each research scenario and include the SPSS syntax and output. If you are using the Afrobarometer Dataset, report the mean of Q1 (Age). If you are using the HS Long Survey Dataset, report the mean of X1SES. Do not forget to evaluate if the t test assumptions are met, justify the selection of type of t test, and report the effect size. Based on your results, provide an explanation of what the implications of social change might be.