Union Activity

A study compared union activity of employees in 10 plants during two different decades. The researchers reported “a significant increase in union activity, t(9) = 3.28, p < .01.” Explain this result to a person who has never had a course
in statistics.

Holden and colleagues (1997) compared mothers’ reported attitudes toward corporal punishment of their children from before to 3 years after having their first child. “The average change in the women’s prior-to-current attitudes was significant, t(107)= 10.32, p <.001 . . . ” . (The change was that they felt more negatively about corporal punishment after having their child.) Explain this result to someone who is familiar with the t test for a single sample, but not with the t test for dependent means.

Table 7–15 (reproduced from Table 4 of Larson et al., 2001) shows ratings of various aspects of work and home life of 100 middle-class men in India who were fathers. Pick three rows of interest to you and explain the results to someone who is familiar with the mean, variance, and Z scores but knows nothing else about statistics.

Sphere

Scale Range Work Home Work vs. Home

Important 0-9 5.98 5.06 6.86***

Attention 0-9 6.15 5.13 7.96***

Challenge 0-9 4.11 2.41 11.49***

Choice 0-9 4.28 4.74 -3.38***

Wish doing else 0-9 1.50 1.44 0.61

Hurried 0-3 1.80 1.39 3.21**

Social anxiety 0-3 0.81 0.64 3.17**

Affect 1-7 4.84 4.98 -2.64**

Social climate 1-7 5.64 5.95 4.17***

Note: Values for column 3 are t scores; df=90 for all t tests.

**p<.01

***p<.001