Quantiative Discussion: Hypothetical Study

Discussion: Hypothetical Study

Important Note: This course contains two types of activities that occur within an online Discussion Board. This week you complete a traditional, graded Discussion in which you must post and then respond to your peers. Next week (and for a number of weeks thereafter), you will participate in a Collaboration Lab, an ungraded activity in which you can work with your peers as you master statistical concepts and learn how to perform tests using SPSS.

Some learning is robust. Are you familiar with the phrase “just like riding a bike?” Once you master the skills necessary to balance on two wheels, your muscle memory locks this skill in for life. Even if years and years pass between jaunts on a bicycle, you do not have to relearn the necessary skills—you just jump on and go. Unfortunately, statistics is utterly unlike riding a bike in almost every conceivable way. If months and years pass between uses of statistical tests, often the knowledge begins to fade away. A different adage applied: “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

In this week’s Discussion, you begin the process of reactivating your statistical brain by taking some time to review multiple regression and the type of research questions that it can answer. Select a topic that interests you, and describe a hypothetical study in which multiple regression could be used to answer the research question.

By Day 3

Construct a post in which you:

1. Provide the research question.
2. Describe the study design.
3. Indicate how the variables would need to be measured (for example, continuous or categorical).
4. Justify why multiple regression would be the best method to use in this research scenario.