Overview
For AT1 - Assignment1 you are required to provide responses to the questions below that focus on the content covered during weeks 1-5. There are 9 questions (5 questions in Part A, 4 questions in Part B), each worth 10 marks. Presentation (e.g.,spelling, grammar, clarity, and adherence to word limits / formatting requirements), accuracy of referencingand inclusion of a PDF of your SPSS output is also worth a total of 10 marks.We encourage you to read a number of sources, then put them aside and draft a response in your own words, as this will help your learning and develop your thinking.You should carefully reference any materials that you cite within your assignment. As a guide, your answers to the questions could be adequately covered by drawing on 2-5 key texts (e.g., textbooks including the Thomas et al. (2015) prescribed textbook or peer-reviewed scientific articles).
Part A
Questions to be answered
1. List the four major steps of the scientific method, and explain why the scientific method is useful for thinking about and solving problems.
2. What are the differences between quantitative and qualitative research methods in terms of the types of research questions that are posed?
3. A‘sport scientist'has recently been appointed to a high-level soccer team. Since taking on the role they have started to explore novel training and preparation methods to enhance player performance. Along the way they stumble across a new ‘cutting-edge'substance DimethylOxycitylesene Gen3 (DOG3). They are able to readily source this substance and given this access and the relatively low cost involved, they decide to run a trial where all players will be injected with the substance and their individual performances monitored across the season. They present their proposal to the management and coaching group who are supportive. The ‘sport scientist', in conjunction with the manager and coaches, then detail the program to the players and explain that the trial will commence two months before the first game and continue throughout the season. You happen to hear of the proposed trial and have some concerns. List and describe two specific ethical issues that are relevant to the proposed trial.
4. Researchers typically constrain the alpha value to 0.05 and the beta value to 0.20. Describe: 1) how the alpha value is related to statistical significance and Type I error; and 2) how the alpha value is related to the beta value, and in turn, how the beta value is related to statistical power and Type II error.
5. A researcher is interested in developing a test to assess the putting performance of high-level golfers. List and briefly describe the four measurement properties for a good measure or test. From the list of four, select one measurement property that the researcher would need to consider, and provide an example to explain how this measurement property could affect the development of the putting skills test. (10 marks)
Part B
SPSS analyses and reporting and interpreting results
For the following questions you will need to download the datafile ‘HSE104 AT1 Tennis.sav' from the Assignment 1 folder on Moodle. You should download and save a copy of this file in your home directory so you can navigate to find this file.
The ‘tennis' datafile is a freely accessible data set (hence it is not de-identified) that includes summary match statistics for a set of elite-level tennis matches. The datafile contains 10 variables and these are described as follows.
- ‘winner' - Name of the winning player
- ‘loser' - Name of the losing player
- ‘gender' - Gender of players [1=female; 2 = male]
- ‘surface' - Type of court surface [1= synthetic; 2 = clay; 3 = grass; 4 = cement]
- ‘ral_len' - Average rally length
- ‘shot_p_s' - Shots per second
- ‘pc_first' - Percentage of first serves in
- ‘first_pc' - Percentage of points won on first serve
- ‘second_pc' - Percentage of points won on second serve
- ‘ln_ral_len' - Natural log of average rally length (i.e., this variable has been created by "transforming"data from the original variable ‘ral_len')
You should open SPSS and then open the ‘HSE104 AT1 Tennis.sav' datafile. Once you have the datafile open within SPSS you should familiarise yourself with the datafile, variables, variable labels...and actual data-points.
1. Prior to commencing any analysis it is important to carefully inspect the contents of the datafile for missing data or out of range values or other anomalies.
You should use SPSS for this task. Within SPSS you should check the datafile and complete Table 1 below. (10 marks)
2. Prior to undertaking any analysis using parametric statistics, it is important for researchers to evaluate whether scores on a variable meet the assumption of normality: whether the variables of interest are normally distributed (or not).You are required to test and report on the distributions for the following variables:
- ral_len
- shot_p_s
- pc_first
- first_pc
- second_pc
- ln_ral_len
You should use SPSS for this task. Once you have finished testing these variables for normality, refer to the SPSS output to complete Table 2 below.
3. Central tendency and variability values are typically calculated during the exploratory data analysis, to condense the scores for each variable of interest into summary values that can help researchers develop an initial understanding about the structure of the data. You are required to compute means and standard deviations for the following variables:
- ral_len
- shot_p_s
- pc_first
- first_pc
- second_pc
- ln_ral_len
You should use SPSS for this task. Once you have finished your analysis, refer to your central tendency and variability results to complete Table 3 below.
4. Another important check that researchers will perform prior to further (inferential) statistical analysis is to test that scores on a variable of interest have approximately equal distributions (or equal variances) for two (or more) groups. You are required to test for equivalence of variances for the following variables for male versus female players:
- pc_first
- first_pc
- ln_ral_len
You should use SPSS for this task. Once you have finished your analysis, refer to the results of your variance testing to complete Table 4 below.
Presentation, referencing and SPSS output file
Presentation-Including spelling, grammar, clarity, and adherence to word limits/format requirements
Referencing-Accuracy of referencing (i.e., citing sources appropriately; correct reference list)
SPSS output file-APDF copy (NOT ‘spv' SPSS output file) of your SPSS output.
Attachment:- Assignment.rar