Unit B Translation Activity

These activities are for practice only — there is nothing to turn in.

Every question in Unit B told you which test to run. Research never does. This activity works the other direction: you are given a study in the words a researcher would use to describe it, and you have to work out what comparison is actually being asked for.

For each study below, answer:

  1. What might the data frame look like? Name the variables, give their types, and say what one row represents.
  2. Which procedure from Unit B fits — a one-sample, independent-samples, or paired-samples \(t\)-test, a one-way ANOVA, or a correlation? Say why the others do not.
  3. What are the null and alternative hypotheses, in words and in symbols?
  4. Is there anything about the design that should make you hesitate before trusting the default version of that test?

Example 1 (Developmental)

A reading intervention is supposed to bring struggling second-graders up to the national benchmark of 90 words read correctly per minute. I run the programme with 40 children and measure their reading fluency at the end of it. I want to know whether this group has reached the benchmark.

Example 2 (Cognitive)

I think people solve anagrams faster in a quiet room than in a noisy one. I recruit 60 people, and each person solves one set of anagrams in a quiet room and a different set in a noisy room, with the order counterbalanced. I record solution time in seconds for each person in each condition.

Example 3 (Organizational)

Our company uses three different onboarding programmes across its regional offices, and I want to know whether new hires end up equally satisfied under all three. I have satisfaction scores from 210 new hires, each of whom went through exactly one programme. The three offices are quite different sizes, and I have been told satisfaction scores are much more spread out at one of them.

Example 4 (Health)

I want to know whether people who sleep more report less daytime fatigue. I ask 95 adults to report their average nightly sleep in hours and to complete a continuous fatigue questionnaire.

Bring your own

Describe a study from your own area the same way — a short paragraph, no statistical vocabulary — and hand it to someone else to translate. Then compare what they wrote to the analysis you actually had in mind.