Lecture 15a Assignment

Unit E · Chapter 15

Instructions

Create a new Quarto document (HTML format), clear out the boilerplate code/text, and use this document to store your answers to each of the three questions below. Be sure to enable embed-resources using the header below. If your answer involves writing text, then use markdown to write 2–4 sentences per question; if you answer involves running code, then use one or more code chunks.

---
title: "Lecture 15a Assignment"
author: "Your Name"
format: html
embed-resources: true
---

Please clearly mark which part of your document is answering which question (e.g., using markdown headings) and remove any “scratch work” or failed attempts from your document before submitting it. Finally, note that many essay-style questions will require you to read between the lines and use your imagination (as opposed to just looking up the answer in the lecture).

Question 1 (Reporting)

  1. For each of the four main sections of an empirical paper (introduction, methods, results, discussion), state in one or two sentences what that section is supposed to accomplish for the reader.

  2. Pick one specific piece of information that authors frequently put in the wrong section (for example, an interpretation that belongs in the discussion but appears in the results). Explain where it belongs and why placing it correctly matters to the reader.

Question 2 (Reviewing the Introduction and Methods)

Find a published research paper in your own area that used multiple regression, and evaluate it from the perspective of a methodological reviewer rather than as an ordinary reader. (Pick a paper you can access in full, including its tables.) Give the full citation, then answer the following.

  1. Report what you found in the introduction. Are the research question and hypotheses stated clearly, and stated before the results? Does the literature justify those specific predictions? Is the study framed as confirmatory or exploratory, and is that framing credible?

  2. Report what you found in the methods. Pay particular attention to whether the sample size is justified (e.g., a power analysis), whether the measures and procedures are described well enough to reproduce, and how the regression was specified: which predictors, why those, and how covariates, missing data, and outliers were handled.

Question 3 (Reviewing the Results and Discussion)

Using the same paper you evaluated in Question 2, write a summary of what you found regarding the results and discussion sections.

  1. Report what you found, paying particular attention to whether the statistical claims are supported by the analyses actually conducted.

  2. Include a few sentences about what you learned from reviewing a paper this way, and one thing you will do differently in your own writing as a result.

✅ Done! Please save and then render your document to an HTML file. Check it over to make sure it is complete (and rendered properly) and then submit it as directed by your instructor. Note that, if any of your code chunks has an error in it, the HTML file will not render properly (this is why removing scratch work is important).