Psychology

Statistics

Worksheet 13

1. For each of the following scatter diagrams, indicate whether the pattern is linear, curvilinear, or no
correlation; if it is linear, indicate whether it is positive or negative and the approximate strength
(large, moderate, small) of the correlation.

2. Four young children were monitored closely over a period of several weeks to measure how much
they watched violent television programs and their amount of violent behavior toward their
playmates. Can you predict the number of violent acts of a child who sees (in average) 15 hours of
violent TV programs?

3. Gable and Lutz (2000) studied 65 children, 3 to 10 years old, and their parents. One of their results
was “Parental control of child eating showed a negative association with children’s participation in
extracurricular activities (r = .34; p < .01)”. Another result was “Parents who held less appropriate
beliefs about children’s nutrition reported that their children watched more hours of television per day
(r = .36; p < .012). Explain these results as if you were writing to a person who has never had a
course in statistics.
4. A study was carried out to explore the relationship between Aggression and several potential
predicting factors in 666 children who had an older sibling. Variables measured were Parenting_Style
(high score = bad parenting practices), Computer_Games (high score = more time spent playing
computer games), Television (high score = more time spent watching television), Diet (high score =
the child has a good diet low in harmful additives), and Sibling_Aggression (high score = more
aggression seen in their older sibling). Past research indicated that parenting style and sibling
aggression were good predictors of the level of aggression in the younger child. All other variables
were treated in an exploratory fashion. Analyze them with a linear model (Child Aggression.sav).

5. A fashion student was interested in factors that predicted the salaries of catwalk models. She collected
data from 231 models (Supermodel.sav). For each model she asked them their salary per day (salary),
their age (age), their length of experience as a model (years), and their industry status as a model as
their percentile position rated by a panel of experts (beauty). Use a linear model (correlation) to see
which variables predict a model’s salary. How valid is the model?

Source:

Andy Field. 2013. Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics (4th ed.). Sage Publications Ltd.).
Aron, A., & Aron, E. N. (1999). Statistics for psychology. Prentice-Hall, Inc.