This assignment supports the research project that will be completed in Assignments 3 and 4 by developing analytical skills and a greater familiarity with nonexperimental research designs, specifically, correlational designs. Please note the sample questions and answer key located in Unit 3 for you to prepare for Assignment 2.

This assignment requires you to identify two reports that describe a correlational study and answer some questions about each.

Correlational studies are conducted for a number of reasons. Sometimes it is the most pragmatic approach to take, and sometimes ethical or practical considerations prevent researchers from doing experiments. Correlational studies involve the measurement of two variables, often at the same time. Then, the researcher looks for a relationship between them, asking questions like, "Do high scorers on one variable also tend to be high or low scorers on the other variable?" This approach is much different from that taken in experiments, where the researcher controls the behaviour or treatment of at least two groups of participants in some way, to measure the effect of that control on some outcome variable.

Of key importance here is your understanding that correlational studies do not involve the manipulation of any variables by the researcher. The researcher is not looking for cause and effect. While they might be interested in understanding what causes what, the important limitation of correlational designs is the multiple pathways to causation that are inherent in the design. In any correlation between two variables, there are three possibilities: A might cause B, B might cause A, or a third variable C might cause both A and B.

When students are learning about correlational research, the most frequent speculation about cause and effect of correlations is that A might cause B; however, students often fail to ponder how B might cause A or how some other variable C might cause both A and B. This assignment requires you to make concrete these speculations about cause and effect, and in doing so, understand that the mere fact that there are multiple possibilities for cause and effect means that we cannot conclude that any of them are true. Doing so should make clear the logic behind the saying "correlation does not equal causation."

Remember, correlations refer to associations in groups of people, not individuals. For example, if a positive correlation were found between hours spent watching television and aggressiveness on the playground in kids, the correlation would tell you nothing about these two variables in one child. Use the three avenues of causation pointed out above to speculate about what might be responsible for such a correlation. Once you begin to understand correlational research, you will see the misunderstanding of cause and effect everywhere. News headlines are often key offenders in making conclusions about cause and effect based on correlational data!

Instructions

Now you are ready to begin the assignment. Visit The Latest Research News https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news on the Association for Psychological Science website, and identify two reports that describe a correlational study.

The first part of this task is not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes, the research methods used in the study are not immediately apparent. You may have to do some digging to determine if the study used a correlational design. A few hints that might help are:

Type "correlation" into the Search box at the top of the page.

If an article has an independent and dependent variable, it is an experiment, not a correlational study.

Look for the word "correlation" or "association" in the article title.

For further clarification, review your understanding of the differences between correlations and experiments in Christie Napa Scollon's Research Designs from the Noba Project website and Richard E. Nisbett's The Superiority of Experiments over Correlations from the Coursera website.

For both of the reports you find, click on the link to the full news story, which will take you to a different website, and carefully read the story. At the bottom of the page, you will find the reference to the original study. You can then apply your knowledge of database searching through the TRU library (e.g., PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, etc.) to find the original article. You'' need to be able to read the original article, not just the abstract.

You will have the opportunity to read about the same piece of research in two sources: the non-scholarly write-up written for the press on the APS website and the original scholarly article, which contains all of the details. Use these two sources to respond to the following five questions for each study:

First, provide the references for both the news story on the website of the Association for Psychological Science and the scholarly source for the original article found on PsycARTICLES, Google Scholar, and so on. Copy and paste the abstract from the academic journal (not the news story) into your assignment. Please give website addresses as well. Next, clearly describe one correlational result reported in the study. Your description should include operational definitions of the variables involved as well as the direction and strength of the correlation. The scholarly article will report the actual correlation value, which is very useful because it will help you visualize what the scatterplot will look like in the next question.

Draw and clearly label a scatterplot that illustrates this correlation using 10 data points. Use Magnusson's interactive webpage Interpreting Correlations: An Interactive Visualization to guide your drawing (it will generate hypothetical data points that you can use). You can plug in the correlation value reported in the article to see what the scatterplot should look like. Important here is the angle of the line connecting the dots in your scatterplotmost psychology studies do not report perfect correlations! The main aim is to demonstrate that you understand and can apply a correlation to a plot.

Speculate about the three possible avenues of cause and effect: A could cause B, B could cause A, or a third variable C could cause both A and B. Which of these seems most plausible and why?

How do the researchers interpret this correlation? Do they explain the correlation in a particular causal direction?

Describe how you might be able to address the same question using a different nonexperimental research design. Your proposed study should use the same variables but should operationalize them differently. For example, if the present study operationalized "exercise" as the amount of time spent running each week, there are infinite other ways to operationalize exercise, such as time spent in a physically active job, number of times going to the gym per week, time spent walking each day, and so on.

Remember to answer all these questions also for the second study report that you have chosen.