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Answering Descriptive Questions in Multivariate Research

Answering Descriptive Questions in Multivariate Research When we are studying more than one variable, we are typically asking one (or more) of the following two questions: How does a person’s score on the first variable compare to his or her score on a second variable?

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Answering Descriptive Questions in Multivariate Research

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  1. Answering Descriptive Questions in Multivariate Research • When we are studying more than one variable, we are typically asking one (or more) of the following two questions: • How does a person’s score on the first variable compare to his or her score on a second variable? • How do scores on one variable vary as a function of scores on a second variable?

  2. Some example multivariate descriptive questions • How does marital satisfaction vary as a function of relationship length? • What is the relationship between the amount of money corporations give to the political parties in power and the number of laws that are passed that financially favor those corporations? • What is the relationship between violent TV viewing and aggressive behavior in children?

  3. Some possible functional relationships between two variables

  4. Graphic presentation • Many of the relationships we’ll focus on in this course are of the linear variety. • The relationship between two variables can be represented as a line. aggressive behavior violent television viewing

  5. Linear relationships can be negative or positive. aggressive behavior aggressive behavior violent television viewing violent television viewing

  6. How do we determine whether there is a positive or negative relationship between two variables?

  7. Scatter plots One way of determining the form of the relationship between two variables is to create a scatter plot or a scatter graph. The form of the relationship (i.e., whether it is positive or negative) can often be seen by inspecting the graph. aggressive behavior violent television viewing

  8. How to create a scatter plot Use one variable as the x-axis (the horizontal axis) and the other as the y-axis (the vertical axis). Plot each person in this two dimensional space as a set of (x, y) coordinates.

  9. (1) The mean of a set of z-scores is always zero 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.0 -4 -2 0 2 4 SCORE Some Useful Properties of Standard Scores Z = (x – M)/SD

  10. (2) The SD of a set of standardized scores is always 1 • Why? SD/SD = 1 if x = 60, M = 50 SD = 10 x 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 z -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

  11. positive relationship negative relationship no relationship

  12. Quantifying the relationship • How can we quantify the linear relationship between two variables? • One way to do so is with a commonly used statistic called the correlation coefficient (often denoted as r).

  13. Some useful properties of the correlation coefficient • Correlation coefficients range between –1 and + 1. Note: In this respect, r is useful in the same way that z-scores are useful: they both use a standardized metric.

  14. Some useful properties of the correlation coefficient (2) The value of the correlation conveys information about the form of the relationship between the two variables. • When r > 0, the relationship between the two variables is positive. • When r < 0, the relationship between the two variables is negative--an inverse relationship (higher scores on x correspond to lower scores on y). • When r = 0, there is no relationship between the two variables.

  15. r = .80 r = -.80 r = 0

  16. Some useful properties of the correlation coefficient (3) The correlation coefficient can be interpreted as the slope of the line that maps the relationship between two standardized variables. slope as rise over run

  17. r = .50 takes you up .5 on y rise run moving from 0 to 1 on x

  18. How do you compute a correlation coefficient? • First, transform each variable to a standardized form (i.e., z-scores). • Multiply each person’s z-scores together. • Finally, average those products across people.

  19. Example

  20. Magnitude of correlations • When is a correlation “big” versus “small?” • There is no real cut-off, but, on average, correlations between variables in the “real world” rarely get larger than .30. • Why is this the case? • Any one variable can be influenced by a hundred other variables. To the degree to which a variable is multi-determined, the correlation between it and any one variable must be small.

  21. Interpreting the Correlation: Correlation Squared • Seldom, indeed, will a correlation be zero or perfect. • The squared correlation describes the proportion of variance in common between the two variables.

  22. Probability • The correlation coefficient is descriptive. • Considering the cases as a sample, what is the chance of getting the correlation computed or greater (in absolute values) when in fact the correlation should be zero?

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