Miller_U5

Bias by John Gregory Miller Capella University Presented in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements, of BMGT8034: Quantitative Research Techniques 503 Lafayette Street Pittsburg, TX, 75686 Telephone: 903-399-6100 Email: jmiller316@capellauniversity.edu Instructor: Dr. Brock Boudreau

Task 2 - Compute and interpret the descriptive statistics: Statistics Percentage on SPSS exam Computer literacy Percentage of lectures attended Numeracy N Valid 100 100 100 100 Missing 0 0 0 0 Mean 58.10 50.71 59.765 4.85 Median 60.00 51.50 62.000 4.00 Mode 72 a 54 48.5 a 4 Std. Deviation 21.316 8.260 21.6848 2.706 Variance 454.354 68.228 470.230 7.321 Skewness -.107 -.174 -.422 .961 Std. Error of Skewness .241 .241 .241 .241 Kurtosis -1.105 .364 -.179 .946 Std. Error of Kurtosis .478 .478 .478 .478 Range 84 46 92.0 13 Percentiles 25 38.00 45.25 46.125 3.00 50 60.00 51.50 62.000 4.00 75 75.00 56.00 74.875 7.00 a. Multiple modes exist. The smallest value is shown The output shows the table of descriptive statistics for the four variables in this example which are: Percentage on SPSS exam ( M = 58.10, SD = 21.316), Computer literacy ( M = 50.71, SD = 8.260), Percentage of lectures attended ( M = 59.765, SD = 21.6848). From these results we see that, on average, students attended nearly 60% of lectures, obtained 58% in their SPSS exam, scored only 51% on the computer literacy test, and only 5 out of 15 on the numeracy test. In addition, we can see that the standard deviation for computer literacy was relatively insignificant compared to that of the percentage of lectures attended and exam scores. These latter two variables had several modes (multimodal) as shown in the charts below.

In the tests, the histograms of each variable are shown with the normal distribution overlaid. The exam scores histogram is interesting because this distribution is quite clearly not normal. There are two peaks which could mean that it is bimodal. Field (2013) states, a problem that can exist with mode is that it can take on multiple values. When this occurs, you can see two peaks that are the highest (Field, 2013) . While this may not indicate an issue, it may show that there needs to be a dissection of the data or that the instrument being used has a flaw. With the computer literacy is normally distributed with some being very good with computers while other are bad, but most fall in the middle. Another thing to note is that the test has produced skewed data where most people did very badly on this test.

Task 7 - Test for Normality, Compute and Interpret a K-S Test: Tests of Normality Kolmogorov-Smirnov a Shapiro-Wilk Statistic df Sig. Statistic df Sig. Percentage on SPSS exam .102 100 .012 .961 100 .005 Numeracy .153 100 .000 .924 100 .000 a. Lilliefors Significance Correction In the data presented here the Percentages on SPSS exam, D (100) = .10, p < .05; and the Numeracy D (100) = 0.15, p < .001, which means that they were both significantly non-normal.