Week 1 Practice Worksheet

PSY/315 Version 6

University of Phoenix Material

Week 1 Practice Worksheet
Prepare a written response to the following questions.

Chapter 1
1. Explain and give an example for each of the following types of variables:

a. Nominal: Variable that has two or more categories, but there is no intrinsic ordering to the
categories. An example of a nominal variable would be gender.
b. Ordinal: A variable used to rank a sample of individuals with some characteristics, but differences.
An example of this would be intervals.
c.

Interval: Allows for the degree of difference between items, but not the ratio between them.

An example could be the temperature used on a Celsius scale, with its two defined points
and then separated into 100 intervals.
d. Ratio scale: An interval scale in which distances are stated with respect to a rational zero rather
than with respect to the mean. An example of a ratio scale would be mass and length.
e. Continuous: A variable that is not restricted to particular values. An example of a continuous
variable would be reaction time.
f.

Discrete: Variables that can only take on a finite number of values. All qualitative variables are
discrete.

g. Quantitative: Variables that are measured on a numeric or quantitative scale. An example of this
variable could be a countrys population, or the speed of a car.
h. Qualitative: Variable that has no natural sense of ordering. They are measured on a nominal
scale. An example of this variable could be a group of names.
2. Following are the speeds of 40 cars clocked by radar on a particular road in a 35-mph zone on a
particular afternoon:
30, 36, 42, 36, 30, 52, 36, 34, 36, 33, 30, 32, 35, 32, 37, 34, 36, 31, 35, 20
24, 46, 23, 31, 32, 45, 34, 37, 28, 40, 34, 38, 40, 52, 31, 33, 15, 27, 36, 40
Make a frequency table and a histogram, then describe the general shape of the distribution.

15-19

20-24

25-29

30-34

35-39

40-44

45-49

50-54

16

11

Copyright 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Week 1 Practice Worksheet

PSY/315 Version 6

3. Raskauskas and Stoltz (2007) asked a group of 84 adolescents about their involvement in traditional
and electronic bullying. The researchers defined electronic bullying as a means of bullying in which
peers use electronics {such as text messages, emails, and defaming Web sites} to taunt, threaten,
harass, and/or intimidate a peer (p.565). The table below is a frequency table showing the
adolescents reported incidence of being victims or perpetrators or traditional and electronic bullying.
a. Using this table as an example, explain the idea of a frequency table to a person who has never
had a course in statistics.
This table shows the frequencies in which the different types of bullying is committed. It goes
through and shows how many has experienced the two different types of bullying, and how many
has committed the two types of bullying. The data was collected from 84 people, and broke down
in to categories of victims of the two types, then the two types are broke in to subcategories then
the data is displayed to the right. Then the chart shows the data for those who have been the
bullied, broke down the same way as the victims.

Copyright 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Week 1 Practice Worksheet

PSY/315 Version 6
b. Explain the general meaning of the pattern of results.

Incidence of Traditional and Electronic Bullying and

Victimization (N=84)
Forms of Bullying
N
%
Electronic victims
41 48.8
Text-message victim
27 32.1
Internet victim (websites, chatrooms)
13 15.5
Picture-phone victim
8
9.5
Traditional Victims
60 71.4
Physical victim
38 45.2
Teasing victim
50 59.5
Rumors victim
32 38.6
Exclusion victim
30 50
Electronic Bullies
18 21.4
Text-message bully
18 21.4
Internet bully
11 13.1
Traditional Bullies
54 64.3
Physical bully
29 34.5
Teasing bully
38 45.2
Rumor bully
22 26.2
Exclusion bully
35 41.7
The chart shows that it people still mostly bully the traditional way with teasing still being the biggest form.

4. Krn and colleagues (2013) tested the effects of a new antibullying program, called KiVa, among
students in grades 13 and grades 79 in 147 schools in Finland. The schools were randomly
assigned to receive the new antibullying program or no program. At the beginning, middle, and end of
the school year, all of the students completed a number of questionnaires, which included the
following two questions: How often have you been bullied at school in the last couple of months?
and How often have you bullied others at school in the last couple of months? The table below is a
frequency table that shows students responses to these two questions at the end of the school year
(referred to as Wave 3 in the title of the table). Note that the table shows the results combined for all
of the students in the study. In the table, victimization refers to students reports of being bullied and
bullying is students reports of bullying other students.
a. Using this table as an example, explain the idea of a frequency table to a person who has never
had a course in statistics
The table show of bullying throughout the different grades using frequency and percentage. What
the frequency is showing is how much the percentage varies.
b. Explain the general meaning of the pattern of results. (You may be interested to know that the
KiVa program successfully reduced victimization and bullying among students in grades 13 but
the results were mixed with regards to the effectiveness of the program among those in grades
79.).
It seems that all together the older grades have more problems in bullying, but with both grades there is

Copyright 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Week 1 Practice Worksheet

PSY/315 Version 6
problems with in twice a month and several times a week.

Frequencies of Responses in the Five Categories of the Self-Reported Bullying and

Victimization Variables at Wave 3
Grades 1-3
Grades 7-9
Victimization
Bullying
Victimization
Bullying
Variable
Freq.
%
Freq.
%
Freq.
%
Freq.
%
Occurrence
Not at all
3,203 53.6
4,296
72
10,660 77.4
10,880 79.5
Only once or twice
1,745 29.2
1,333 22.3
2,031 14.7
1,987 14.5
2 or 3 times a month
446
7.5
197
3.3
402
2.9
344
2.5
About once a week
297
5
90
1.5
312
2.3
196
1.4
Several times a week
281
4.7
49
0.8
375
2.7
279
2
Participants
Respondents n
5,972 100
5,965 100
13,780 100
13,686 100
Missing n
955
962
2,723
2,817
Total N
6,927
6,927
16,503
16,503

Copyright 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission.