Family involvement in homework. Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork (TIPS) is an interactive homework process designed to improve the quality of homework assignments for elementary, middle, and high school students. TIPS homework assignments require students to conduct interactions with family partners (parents, guardians, etc.) while completing the homework. Frances Van Voorhis (Johns Hopkins University) conducted a study to investigate the effects of TIPS in science, mathematics, and language arts homework assignments (April 2001). Each in a sample of 128 middle school students was assigned to complete TIPS homework assignments, while 98 students in a second sample were assigned traditional, noninteractive homework assignments (called ATIPS).
At the end of the study, all students reported on the level of family involvement in their homework on a 4- point scale (0 = never, 1 = rarely, 2 = sometimes, 3 = frequently, 4 = always). Three scores were recorded for each student: one for science homework, one for math homework, and one for language arts homework. The data for the study are saved in the HWSTUDY file. (The first five and last five observations in the data set are listed in the next table.)
(a) Conduct an analysis to compare the mean level of family involvement in science homework assignments of TIPS and ATIPS students. Use α = .05. Make a practical conclusion.
(b) Repeat part a for mathematics homework assignments.
(c) Repeat part a for language arts homework assignments.
(d) What assumptions are necessary for the inferences of parts a-c to be valid? Are they reasonably satisfied?
