PY7163 research design and analysis for psychology

You have just joined a team of Consulting Psychologists. The team has a client organization that markets a range of products and services, including a chain of Health Clubs. Your supervisor has given you a dataset obtained for the client relating to the marketing and consumer response to the clubs and she wants you to investigate the dataset with the aim of producing a report for the client highlighting what it suggests.

The data were obtained by interview and questionnaire from 263 club members after the first three months of membership.

SPSS variable name	Description	Possible values
ID	Case number
Gender		1 – Female 2 – Male
FirstContact	Point of first contact for membership	1 – Visit to a Club 2 – Television 3 – Facebook
NVisits	Number of visits in the first three months of membership	1 (low) - 7 (high)
Big5_ E	Big 5 – Extraversion This trait includes characteristics such as excitability, sociability, talkativeness, assertiveness, and high amounts of emotional expressiveness.	1 - 10
Big5_N	Big 5 – Neuroticism Individuals high in this trait tend to experience emotional instability, anxiety, moodiness, irritability, and sadness.	1 - 10
Big5_O	Big 5 – Openness This trait features characteristics such as imagination and insight, and those high in this trait also tend to have a broad range of interests.	1 - 10
Big5_C	Big 5 - Conscientiousness Common features of this dimension include high levels of thoughtfulness, with good impulse control and goaldirected behaviours. Those high in conscientiousness tend to be organized and mindful of details.	1 - 10
Big5_A	Big 5 - Agreeableness This personality dimension includes attributes such as trust, altruism, kindness, affection, and other prosocial behaviours.	1 - 10

SPSS variable name	Description	Possible values
Internet	Estimated hours of internet use per week.
BRAND_L	Brand loyalty	Scores (0 - 100)
CUST_S	Customer satisfaction score	Scores (0 - 100)
Age	Age in years

Task

The data file was set up by a temporary member of staff who had no specific knowledge of the variables and you have been warned that the file may contain some input errors. So the first task is to screen the data to identify any possible input errors and decide how you want to deal with these.

You should then provide a statistical summary of each of the key variables.

The client would like to know what influenced how much members used the club, their overall satisfaction and their loyalty to other products and services marketed by the organisation.

The questions you have been asked to investigate are therefore as follows:

Are there any differences between male and female customers on variables that might to be of importance to the organisation and future marketing campaigns?
Does the number of visits made, brand loyalty or customer satisfaction vary with the initial point of contact or gender of the customer?
Are those customers whose first point of contact was Facebook greater internet users.
Are the personality variables useful in predicting number of visits, customer satisfaction or brand loyalty?

Report

You will prepare a report in three sections: The main report, Appendix A, Appendix B and Appendix C.

The main report

Your report is intended for a mixed audience of graduate level employees. All will have a reasonable grasp of quantitative data, but only a few will have a good understanding of inferential statistical methods. It is important, therefore, that

your account should provide a clear statement of each question being addressed with an adequate description of the data being used to address the question using summary tables and/or graphical presentation, with appropriate text directing the reader’s attention to the key points.

and

the descriptive accounts are backed up by appropriate statistical analysis presented in a style appropriate for those with an understanding of statistical method.

The report does not need to follow the structure of a research paper for publication, but the presentation of data summaries, graphs and the outcome of statistical analyses should follow American Psychological Association guidelines.

This part of the report should not include any raw output (cut and paste) from SPSS, so all required information must be taken from SPSS and presented appropriately.

Appendix A

This will report on how you screened the data and what you did with cases that appeared to be data entry errors. This appendix can include raw SPSS output.

Appendix B

This will report how you investigated any key statistical assumptions required for the analyses used and what you concluded from these investigations. This part of the report can have unformatted extracts from SPSS output to show the procedures used. Where appropriate you should indicate how SPSS has dealt with the failure of an assumption. Appendix C

This will have all of the raw SPSS output relating to the analyses reported in the main report. Only analyses you have referred to in the main report should be included and each analysis should be clearly labelled so that it can be linked to what is presented in the main report.

General formatting instructions

The main report and three appendices must be compiled as a single document.
Include a title page with your student ID.
Write the report in Arial 11pt with 1.5 line spacing. 4. Include a running header with your student ID
Include page numbers.

References

American Psychological Association (2009). Publication Manual. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

The following are recommended for further reading on the statistical methods you use Field, A. (2013) Discovering statistics using SPSS. (4th ed). Sage.

Howell, D.C. (2013). Statistical methods for psychology (8^th ed.). London: Duxbury

Pallant, J. (2010). SPSS survival manual: A step by step guide to data analysis using SPSS (4th ed.). Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill. – see new editions