research design and ethics

This folder contains a Lab #2 case scenario, a participant data file, as well an instructional PowerPoint to walk you through the step-by-step to use SPSS/PASW.  
 

2. In order to submit this assignment, you will submit all three documents to the “submit assignment” link, below: (1) Your Microsoft word document with all of the answers to the questions on the Case Scenario, with your answers numbered, (2) Your SPSS Datafile [this has a “.sav” file extension], and (3) Your SPSS Output file [this has a “.spv” file extension].  You will find an example of how these attachments look in an email by clicking on the “SPSS Labs” tab on blackboard and clicking on the first document ‘How to Email SPSS lab assignments’.

 I will only grade Labs that have all three completed files, uploaded in the correct format.

4. All the materials you will need for Lab #2 are found in the ‘SPSS Labs’ Blackboard tab, in the “SPSS Lab #2” folder.

5. This second lab is going to teach you how to use DATA to evaluate your practice, through a case vignette about gerontological social work.  You should first read the “Case Scenario for Lab #2” carefully.  There are 8 questions you must answer, listed at the end of the Case Scenario (NOTE: You will NOT be creating a Descriptive Statistics table for this Lab #2).  Number your questions on the Microsoft word doc, so that I know which question you are answering.  You can only answer the questions AFTER you have run your analyses in SPSS, so don’t try and answer them before analyzing your data.  Remember, your answers should be based on your data analysis from the Output file – not on your ‘personal opinion’ or ‘experience’, and you must also integrate knowledge/concepts from your assigned readings and lectures into your answers.  This is part of ‘evidence-based practice’, which in this lab, is using evidence to evaluate your practice.

6. Your participant data (standardized scales you hypothetically distributed to older adults) are found in the “PRE-test” file, and the “POST-test” file.  This is the data from your participant pre-test and post-test that you will need to enter into SPSS and analyze to answer the questions on the Case Scenario. 

You are going to encounter specific challenges in this lab, in which you are going to find a few ‘problems’ with some of the participants’ responses.  You must utilize your critical thinking and integrate your readings to figure out how best to handle this situation.  Please do not email me asking me ‘what to do’ about these items.  Remember, there are several ways in which to solve problems, and I want you to use your knowledge and critical thinking to come up with a good solution.

7. Before you get started defining the variables for this survey in the SPSS “Variable View” tab, you should watch the lecture video, entitled “Introduction to SPSS Lab #2’”.  

8.  Once you have defined variables in the “Variable View” tab, and also entered all participant data for both the pre-test and post-test in the “Data View” tab, you must watch the lecture video, entitled “Introduction to SPSS Lab #2”.  That video will show you what to do in SPSS to run your analysis to evaluate change on self-esteem between pre-test and post-test.  

9. After running your analysis in SPSS, the software will give you an Output file, which will give you the results of differences between scores for pre-and post-tests.  You will interpret the results on the Output file and use your critical thinking to answer questions #1-8 from your Case Scenario.