A Survey of 50 Parents

In January ‘08, fifty elementary school parents of a county school district were surveyed regarding their satisfaction with a free after-school day care program. The parents filled out the survey on after the end of the fall semester (in January ‘08). In June ‘08, the parents were telephoned and resurveyed and were asked to rate their overall satisfaction again.

Variable Position Label Measurement Level

id 1 ID Scale Participant ID number

Safety 2 Safety of Children Scale On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the safety of the environment for the children?

Education 3 Educational Activities Scale On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your satisfaction with the educational activities?

Social 4 Social Activities Scale On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your satisfaction with the social activities?

Physical 5 Physical Activities Scale On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your satisfaction with the physical activities (sports, dance, etc.)?

Newstudent 6 Type of Student Ordinal 0 = new student 1 = returning student

Usage 7 Usage Level Scale What percent of the school semester is your child in the day care program?

Osatjan 8 Overall Satisfaction in January Scale On a scale of 1 to 7, rate your overall satisfaction with the day care program.

Osatjun 9 Overall Satisfaction in June Scale On a scale of 1 to 7, rate your overall satisfaction with the day care program.

Title1 10 Receives Title 1 Free Lunch Nominal Does your child receive a free lunch?

0 = No; 1 = Yes

Family 11 Number of Parents Nominal 0 = One Parent/Guardian; 1 = 2 Parents/Guardians

Children 12 Number of Children in School Nominal 1 = One Child; 2 = Two Children; 3 = Three or more

Variables in the working file

For each research question, describe in your Microsoft Word document the application of the seven steps of the hypothesis testing model.

Step 1: State the hypothesis (null and alternate).

Step 2: State your alpha (unless requested otherwise, this is always set to alpha = .05).

Step 3: Collect the data (use one of the data sets).

Step 4: Calculate your statistic and p-value (this is where you run spss and examine your output files).

Step 5: Retain or reject the null hypothesis. (This is where you report the results of your analyses t (df) = t-value, p = sig. level.)

Step 6: Assess the Risk of Type I and Type II Error. (Did the data meet the assumptions of the statistic, effect size, and sample size?)

Step 7: State your results in APA style and format.

Application Assignments-

Question 1: Are there differences in parent satisfaction with the safety of their children between those who have one child, two children, or three or more in day care?

1. Run the One-Way ANOVA.

2. Use Children as the independent variable.

3. Use Safety as the dependent variable.

4. Select descriptive statistics and tests of homogeneity.

5. Choose an appropriate post-hoc comparison to evaluate the differences between groups.

Question 2: Did type of student (new vs. returning) and the Free Lunch program affect overall parent satisfaction in January?

1. Run a Two-Way Between Groups ANOVA.

2. Use Newstudent and Title1 as independent variables.

3. Use Overall Satisfaction in January as the dependent variable.

4. Report the descriptive statistics, assumptions tests, effect sizes (partial eta) as well as tests of statistical significance.

Question 3: Is there an improvement in parent satisfaction from January to June? And are new students more satisfied than returning students?

1. Run a One-Way Between Groups ANCOVA.

2. Use Newstudent as the independent variable.

3. Use Overall Satisfaction in January as the covariate.

4. Use Overall Satisfaction in June as the dependent variable.

5. Report the descriptive statistics, assumptions tests, effect sizes (partial eta) as well as tests of statistical significance.

Write a brief conclusion statement summarizing your results. What can you tell the district about parent satisfaction by family size (number of children in day care)? Does satisfaction change over time? Are the parents of new students more satisfied than the parents of returning students?

Application Assignments-

Question 1: Is there a relationship among the variables measuring different aspects of parent satisfaction?

1. Run a Pearson correlation matrix using Safety, Education, Social, Physical, Overall Satisfaction in January and Overall Satisfaction in June.

2. Create a scatterplot for the following pairs: (1) Safety-Overall Satisfaction in June; and (2) Education-Overall Satisfaction in June.

3. Report the descriptive statistics, assumptions tests, as well as tests of statistical significance. Identify strong and weak correlations.

Question 2: Does Safety Impact Overall Satisfaction in June?

1. Run a simple regression using Safety as the independent variable and Overall Satisfaction in June as the dependent variable.

2. Report the descriptive statistics, assumptions tests (scatterplots), as well as tests of statistical significance.

Question 3: Does Safety and Education Impact Overall Satisfaction in June?

1. Run a stepwise multiple regression using Safety and Education as the independent variables and Overall Satisfaction in June as the dependent variable.

2. Report the descriptive statistics, assumptions tests (scatterplots), as well as tests of statistical significance.

Write a brief conclusion statement summarizing your results. What can you tell this district about the relationship among satisfaction variables? Are there any areas they need to improve? Does adding a second variable to the regression equation increase prediction of parent satisfaction in June?

Application Assignments-

Question 1: In Fall ‘07, the district sent home flyers encouraging parents to take advantage of the free after-school day care services, hoping to increase utilization. Are larger families using these services more than smaller families? In other words, does the utilization by family size (one child, two children, three or more) differ from what one would expect by chance?

1. Run a chi square goodness of fit using Children as the variable with "all categories equal."

2. Report the observed and expected values and the tests of statistical significance.

Question 2: The district received data from the State indicated that this type of after-school program tends to attract larger families. Does the distribution of family in this county (one child, two children, three or more) differ from the State data?

1. Run a chi square goodness of fit using Family Size as the variable with "all categories unequal" with 12, 26, and 12 as the expected values.

2. Report the observed and expected values and the tests of statistical significance.

Question 3: The district would like to know if there is a relationship between the Family Size and Free Lunch in the utilization of day-care services.

1. Run chi square independence test (crosstabs) using Family Size in the rows and Title1 in the column.

2. Use the chi square and the phi coefficient to evaluate the relationship and statistical significance.

3. Report the observed and expected values and the tests of statistical significance.

Write a brief conclusion statement summarizing your results. What can you tell this district about the kinds of families that use the day care program? Is utilization in this county similar or different than the state? What type of family is the most frequent user of these services?