APPLICATION OF STATISTICS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

MPPU 1034

ASSIGNMENT 2

Dr. Megat Aman Zahiri Mgt Zakaria

a. Re-write the research objectives, research questions, descriptions pertaining to the data
and research findings.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

RO1: Determine the level of transformational leadership among principals of Chinese

independent high schools in Johor

RO2: Determine whether gender impact the level of emotional intelligence among teachers of
independent Chinese high schools in Johor

RO3: Determine whether teaching experience impact the level of emotional intelligence
among teachers of independent Chinese high schools in Johor.

RO4: Determine there is any significant relationship between transformational leadership of

principal and emotional intelligence of teacher.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

RQ1: What is the level of transformational leadership among principals of independent

Chinese high schools in Johor?

RQ2: What is the impact of gender on the level of emotional intelligence among teachers of
independent Chinese high schools in Johor?

RQ3: What is the impact of teaching experience on the level of emotional intelligence among
teachers of independent Chinese high schools in Johor?

RQ4: Is there any significant relationship between transformational leadership of principals

and emotional intelligence of teacher?
DESCRIPTIONS OF DATA COLLECTION

RESEARCH DESIGN

This is a quantitative research, based on teachers’ teaching experience, and gender to

investigate the level of principals’ transformational leadership. This research intend to see
whether gender and teaching experience influence teachers’ emotional intelligence level and
relationship between principal’ transformational leadership and teachers’ emotional
intelligence. While variables in quantitative studies can be measured by closed-ended
questions through research tools then statistical analysis of quantitative data to validate the
research hypothesis.

INSTRUMENTS USED

A questionnaire consisting of three major parts, with 50 questions each. Part A consists of
closed ended demographic information of respondents while Part B is about transformational
leadership uses Likert scale of a 4-point scale, from strongly disagree, disagree, agree and
strongly agree. Part C is another type of Likert scale, which consists of almost never, rarely,
sometimes, usually, almost always.

DATA GATHERING

Online questionnaire and paper form questionnaire were used. All the questionnaire were
distributed to the teachers of two independent Chinese high schools in Johor as they have
relatively high number of teacher in the faculty.
DATA ANALYSES

All the statistical analysis will be perform using version 22 SPSS consisting of reliability analysis,
variability analysis, and T-test analysis, ANOVS and correlation analysis.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

i. Research question 1 can be simply summarized as “ principals of independent Chinese

high schools Johor have high level of transformational leadership.

ii. There is different in level of emotional intelligence between male and female teachers in
independent Chinese high schools Johor”. Because there are five competency models in
emotional intelligence while emotional three competency models are at high level in the
frequency test.

iii. There is mean different in the level of teachers’ emotional intelligence among different
teaching experience groups in independent Chinese high schools Johor”. There is at least
one mean different among teaching experience groups. Because there are two
competency models are significant different among teaching experience groups
b. What do you think about the suitability and appropriateness of instruments used in this
study (in terms of scaling, clarification, suitability and appropriateness to answer the
RQs)? Justify your answer.
In the demographic part, for teaching experience, there were too many categories
involved. For teachers in the categories of 26 to 30 years and 30 years, we believe they
can be put in the same categories as teachers from these two categories should come
from the same generation and due to the length of service, their impact will not be too
different. For academic qualification, master degree and PhD can be grouped together, as
in high school education; these two qualification will not show a big difference.

For RQ1, the author wanted to investigate the level of transformational leadership
among principals of independent Chinese school in Johor but the number of school being
sample is only limited to school which means there are only two principals involved in the
research. Using only two principals will not be sufficient to represent all the principals in
Johor.

For RQ 4, “Is there any significant relationship between transformational leadership

of principals and emotional intelligence of teacher?” there seems to be an ambiguity.
Emotional intelligence (EI) by definition is ability to monitor your own emotions as well as
the emotions of others, to distinguish between and label different emotions correctly, and
to use emotional information to guide your thinking and behavior and influence that of
others (Goleman, 1995; Mayer & Salovey, 1990). This clearly shows that EI depends on
our own ability to manage own emotion, be empathy with others emotions and feelings
and how we handle those situations, thus it cannot be affected by others’ leadership as it
is our own capability that we have built over the years.

c. What do you think about the suitability and appropriateness of data gathered in this
study (in terms of types of data gathered, how the raw data were processed and
suitability to answer the RQs)? Justify your answer.
 The purpose of the study was to determine the principals’ transformational
leadership and teachers’ emotional intelligence of independent Chinese High Schools in
Johor. The researchers submitted three hypotheses.  The third hypothesis seemed not
suitable to use which was “There is no clear evidence to show that there is any significant
relationship between transformational leadership among principals and emotional
intelligence among teachers of independent Chinese high schools”. The sample was
random; there are 183 respondents from school 1 and school 2 from representative
Chinese-language independent secondary school in Johor. However, data gathered for the
gender is not specifically mentioned. The researcher used pie chart to represent profile
detail of respondents’ gender with only percentages counted without exact number or
value.  Within the sample, shows that in school 1, 10.8% of respondents have diploma,
78.5% of the total respondents have bachelor degree and who have received master
degree and PHD account for 9.7% and 1.1% of the respondents, respectively. With regard
the teaching experience of respondents showed in school 1, accounting 50.5% of
respondents had experience of 1 to 5 years, 8.6%, 5.4%, 6.5%, 1.1% and 5.4% of the
number of respondents, with 6-10 years, 11-15 years, 20 years 21-25 years and 26-30
years of teaching experience respectively. While this is a good sample size, the problem
lies with the distribution of the sample.  However, the sample number for School 1 and
School 2 were not mentioned. The researcher should have added the number of sample
between both schools in the data analysis instead of letting the reader calculate the
number of respondents in teaching experience’s data.

Besides research question 2 (RQ2) is not suitable to be used. The research

question was, “What is the impact of gender on the level of emotional intelligence among
teachers of independent Chinese high schools in Johor?” the research question not specific
enough to be well covered in the space available. This unclear vision of this question does
not specify which impact might affect the level of emotional intelligence among teachers
based on gender in the instrument used in this study. In additional, through the data
gathered, the researcher does not include the gender as well as questioned in his research
 question. It showed in Table 4.8- Table 4.13. Moreover, the structures of data were not
well arranged in Chapter 4. The normality test should be explained earlier before running
any test. The explanation that made by researcher also had faulty in some areas. “0.000 is
not really 0” is not suitable to mention in explaining the sig value. In making hypothesis in
correlation test, the researcher had mentioned, “The correlation is not week”. The
researcher should know the incorrect spelling might affected the meaning.

d. Give your comments on the statistical analyses performed and the way results were
interpreted and reported. Your comments must be made in the light of remarks of Item
(a), Item (b) and Item (c) stated above.
Under the demographic analysis, for gender, the author only reported that
“women accounting for the largest proportion of respondents and males with the smallest
percentage, which were 64.6% and 34.4%” while this does not show clearly the difference
in number in term of overall total. For teaching experience and highest academic
qualification, the scale for the histogram were not accurate as the author are reporting in
term of respondents’ number but the scale were in 1 and 2 decimal place such as 0.1 – 0.8
and 0.05 – 0.5. For highest academic qualification, the Master and PhD categories could
have been reported under one category as Postgraduate.

For RQ 1, under Dimension 1 and 2, the results obtained for median and low has
percentage difference between 2-4%. The author just concluded that it is considered as
median without acknowledging the fact that the difference is quite small and might not
give a significant difference.

In term of RQ 4 reporting, the author only wrote “Table 4 has obviously presented
the direction, degree and form of correlation” this is not the correct way to report the
result. The author should have stated clearly the direction, degree and the form of
correlation involved. There were also no explanation on the significance of the result
obtained. The usage of word like “not strong” and “not weak “is not very accurate. “0.000
 is not really 0” is also another example of inaccurate reporting. Reporting the hypothesis
as to be “accepted” is considered not accurate and the correct term should be “fail to
reject”.

e. Suggest (with appropriate descriptions and rationale) further or additional analyses to

be performed by the researcher to improve the ‘correctness’ or accuracy’ of this
research.

Upon to analysis based on research question 2 (RQ2), ”What is the impact of gender on the
level of emotional intelligence among teachers of independent Chinese high schools in Johor”,
in order to improve the ‘correctness’ or ‘accuracy’ of this research, we would like to suggest
the researcher to use Repeated Measures, Friedman Test instead of using Man Whitney-U test
for all dependent variables. This is because the researcher may uses ordinal data from three or
more treatment condition to test a hypothesis about the differences between three or more
populations (or treatment condition). The repeated‐measures design eliminates individual
differences from the between‐treatments variability because the same subjects are used in
every treatment condition. Since the researcher wants to compare more than two dependent
variables which are there are five, five competency model of Emotional Intelligence ( Self
Awareness, Relationship Management, Teachers’ Empathy, Teachers’ Motivation and
Teachers’ Emotional Self-Management) Friedman-Test is the suitable analysis to be ran.
Moreover, there are no individual differences between treatments because the same
individuals are tested in every treatment. Besides, the researcher used Pearson Correlation to
statistically test the Research Question 3 (RQ3) “What is the impact of teaching experience on
the level of emotional intelligence among teachers of independent Chinese high schools in
Johor”. However Pearson correlation requires that the scores be numerical values from an
interval or ratio scale of measurement. Furthermore the data was initially not normally
distributed. So in that reason, the researcher should go to Spearmen Correlation which fulfill
the requirement which are the data is not normal and one of the variable is categorical.