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102 CHAPTER 4 Statistical analysis

RESEARCH DESIGN EXERCISES

Read the following research questions and identify the appropriate statistical methods
for each scenario.
1. Is there a difference in the time spent online per week for people who are single,
people who are married without kids, and people who are married with kids?
2. Is there a difference between the weights of Americans and Canadians within the
age ranges 20–40, 40–60, and above 60?
3. Is there a difference in the target selection speed between the mouse and the
joystick for children who are 5–9 years old? (Each child uses both the mouse
and the joystick during the study.)
4. Use the distance between the current cursor location and the target location to
predict the amount of time needed to select a target.
5. Is there a difference between users in the United States and users in the United
Kingdom when using three search engines? (Each user should use all three
engines during the study.)
6. Do students in the English department have a higher GPA than students in the
Education department?
7. Is there a relationship between the sales of Cheerios and the sales of milk in a
grocery store?

8. Is there a difference between the blood pressures of people over 60 in the
morning, at noon, and in the evening? (Each participant contributes three data
points, each from a different time of the day.)

TEAM EXERCISES

Form a team of 4–5 members. Find a research topic that could be studied with
existing resources available to your team. For example, comparing the time it takes
to find a specific product on an e-Commerce website by two different user groups.
Develop a research hypothesis and an appropriate experimental design to evaluate
that hypothesis.
Recruit 10–20 participants and collect a set of data. The participants can be your
classmates, friends, or relatives. Complete the following steps to analyze the data:

1. Clean up the data and code it if necessary.
2. Describe the data using descriptive statistics.
3. Select the appropriate statistical method for analyzing the data.