Developmental Study

Question

Identify the appropriate hypothesis test for each of the fol1owing research situations.
 

a. A researcher conducts a cross-sectional developmental study to determine whether there is a significant difference in vocabulary skills between eight-year-old and 10-year-old children.
 

b. A researcher determines that 8%, of the males enrolled in Introductory Psychology have some form of color blindness, compared to only 2 % of the females. Is there a significant relationship between color blindness and gender?
 

c. A researcher records the daily sugar consumption and the activity level for each of 20 children enrolled in a summer camp program. The researcher would like to determine whether there is a significant relationship between sugar consumption and activity level.
 

d. A researcher would like to determine whether a four-week therapy program produces significant changes in behavior. A group of 25 participants is measured before therapy, at the end of therapy, and again three months after therapy.
 

e. A researcher would like to determine whether a new program for teaching mathematics is significantly better than the old program. It is suspected that the new program will be very effective for small-group instruction but probably will not work well with large classes. The research study involves comparing four groups of students: a small class taught by the new method, a large class taught by the new method, a small class taught by the old method, and a large class taught by the old method.

Question

In the field of mental health research, describe a research scenario in which you might use the following statistics. What are your null and alternate hypotheses (in words)?

1. Chi squared test of independence

2. Dependent t-test

3. Kruskal-Wallis test  

4. One sample t-test