Another aspect to consider is
keeping track of all the analyses you run and what they show. There are several
ways to do this. You can simply save all of your SPSS outputs in a separate
file on your computer; if you do this, rename the file with what is in the
analysis, e.g., "ANOVA gender & age" (otherwise you have to
reopen each file to see it). Another way is to print out all of your data
outputs and save them in a file or binder. My own favorite way to keep my data
output is to copy it or rewrite it as I go into a Word file. The advantage of
this is I am keeping everything together, which is relevant (you will generate
a lot of irrelevant information as you go). Do keep in mind that SPSS tables
are not in APA format, so any you want to use in your paper will need to be
reformatted.
I also find it helpful to think
through what I am finding with each analysis (even though this technically goes
in Chapter 5, I find it helpful to think about it at the analysis stage). Let
us work through an example; I find that my independent variable education level
is correlated with my dependent variable, emotional intelligence (EI) total
score. So my first question is which education level has a higher EI score? I
could do a scatterplot or could just calculate the means for each education
level (use Analyze/ Descriptive Stats/ Explore). I then find that people with a
graduate degree have a higher emotional intelligence score than people with a
high school diploma in the sample. Is this what previous research has found? What
if this is not the relationship other researchers have reported? I need to
consider why my sample may be different. I check what else is correlated with
education, perhaps I find for this sample, gender is highly related to
emotional intelligence. Do another scatterplot or Explore between gender and
education. Whoa, all of the graduate level participants are female. Could that
be the reason education and emotional intelligence score are correlated?
Remember your committee can help with any issues you may find.
Next time I will discuss the final
defense. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss
in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas!
leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu
No comments:
Post a Comment