Description

1)   For each of the following scenarios, please write a directionalresearch hypothesis statement (8 points)

a.    Researchers conducted a study to test the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral telephone therapy intervention for patients with breast cancer. Women in the study were randomly assigned to the intervention or to a control group. The dependent variables were psychological distress, coping and quality of life and these were measured at baseline and at follow-up, and changes over time were determined. 

b.    A researcher wishes to assess the effectiveness of relaxation instruction upon subsequent self-reported chronic back pain. She selects 25 patients from those admitted to a clinic during the month of January who report extreme back pain and measures them both before and after they receive relaxation instruction. 

c.    A researcher administers a job satisfaction survey to nurses in a large academic medical center. The researcher wants to correlate nurses’ job satisfaction with nurse retention rates in the facility. There was an 80% response rate for the survey. 

d.    A hospital introduces a new order-entry system and wishes to study the impact of this intervention on the number of medication-related adverse events before and after the intervention. The hospital is going to collect data before the new order-entry system is in place and then after the system is in place to determine if the number of medication-related adverse events decreases. The dependent variable is the number of medication-related events. The independent variable is the new order-entry system. 

You will use this background information to answer questions 4, 5 and 6. The Nurse Survey Study collected demographic and personal attitude data on several workforce issues from 654 nurses in the Boston, Massachusetts. This study was a cross-sectional study designed to evaluate workforce issues in nurses. You are provided with a few variables from the data set to demonstrate your ability to analyze and interpret data using various statistical tests. The data set is called “Confidence.sav”. The variable confid (Confidence) is the outcome that the researchers were interested in and was measured using 13 items on a 7-point Likert-type scale (scores range from 13 to 91). Please open that data set in SPSS and perform appropriate tests to answer questions 4, 5 and 6. Please attach a clean/edited copy of your SPSS output at the end of this assignment.

2)   Use SPSS to calculate the descriptive statistics and complete the highlighted portions of the table. NOTE:Use the “valid percent” when reporting percentages of categorical variables. (6 points)

Table 1. Sample characteristics, The Nurse Survey (N=701)

*N= sample size; n=frequency; %=percentage

3)    Use SPSS to provide a separate histogram showing the distribution of each of the variables Confidence (confid) and Age.  (6 points) 

a. Copy and paste the histogram of each variable here.  (2 points)

b. Describe the distribution of the data for each variable in a sentence or two. Include the following in your response: What is the approximate range of values? What is the center of the distribution? (2 points)

c. Are the data approximately normally distributed or skewed?  If the data are skewed please indicate if it is a positive or negative skew.  (2 points)

4)   Suppose you are interested in testing the hypothesis that confidence scores (confid) are lower in female nurses as compared to male nurses. Use SPSS to test this hypothesis with a t-test (assume normality of confidence scores for the purpose of answering this). (5 points)

a.    Write a null hypothesis for this study. (1 point)

b.    Do you assume equal variance or unequal variance? Why? (1 point)

c.    What is the t-test statistic value? What is the p value associated with that? (1 point)

d.    What do you conclude about the mean difference in confidence scores between female and male nurses? (2 points)