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1. Fowler and Christakis (2008) report that personal happiness tends to be associated with having a social network including many other happy friends. To test this claim, a researcher obtains a sample of n=16 adults who claim to be happy people and a similar sample of n=16 adults who describe themselves as neutral or unhappy. Each individual is then asked to identify the number of their close friends whom they consider to be happy people.
a. What is the independent variable? What scale of measurement is it on?
b. What is the dependent variable? What scale of measurement is it on?
c. Calculate the mean, median, and mode for each set of scores (one for Happy and one for Unhappy)
The scores from the study are as follows:
Happy: 8, 7, 4, 10, 6, 6, 8, 9, 8, 8, 7, 5, 6, 9, 8, 9
Unhappy: 5, 8, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 6, 2, 8, 5, 6, 4, 7, 5, 6
Create a frequency distribution graph for each set of scores
d. Based on your preliminary analyses, do you think the researchers hypotheses is correct? Why or why not? (there is no right or wrong answer here, this is just based on what YOU think based on the numbers).
2. Identify the circumstances in which the median rather than the mean is the preferred measure of central tendency.
3. A veterinarian is interested in the lifespan of golden retrievers. She recorded the age of death (in years) of the retrievers treated in her clinic. The ages in her sample were: 12, 9, 11, 10, 8
a. Calculate the mean and median
b. What are some potential explanations for why some dogs live to 12, while others pass away at 8? Again: there is no right or wrong answer here…just use critical thinking)
4. You are trying to measure the variable “hunger” in people (i.e. you want to find a way to measure how much hunger each person has, or how people are different from each other in terms of their hunger). Come up with a way to measure hunger (for each, you will have to come up with a question and answer choices):
a. On a nominal scale
b. Ordinal scale
c. Interval scale
d. Ratio scale
5. Stephens et al. (2009) conducted a study demonstrating that swearing can help reduce pain. In the study, participants were asked to plunge their hand into icy water, and keep it there as long as the pain would allow. In one condition, the participants repeatedly yelled their favorite curse words, while their hands were in the water. In the other condition, the participants yellow a neutral word (like “chair”). The researchers measured the number of seconds participants kept their hand in the icy water in each condition. Data are presented below:
a. What is the independent variable in this study? How many values does it have?
b. What is the dependent variable in this study? What is the scale of measurement for this variable?
c. Calculate the mean, median and mode for each condition. Based on your calculations, does it appear that swearing helped with pain tolerance? Justify your answer.
