Advanced Data Analysis Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice completing both quantitative and qualitative analysis.  The quantitative portion of this assignment builds on what you did in the first assignment and allows you to practice a couple more tests for assessing the difference between variables when you have more than 2 categories in your independent variable(s).  It also allows you to run analysis on a very basic factorial design.

Many of you will also have gathered qualitative data in your dissertation, so Part 2 of this assignment will give you some basic practice analyzing qualitative data.  This should prepare you for the steps you will need to take with your own data.  If you already have the qualitative portion of your data, feel free to use that instead of the data provided.

You can find the following resources on Canvas for this assignment:

• Data set needed to complete Part 1
• Powerpoint/lecture with a flow chart (repeat from Assignment 1)
• Survey and data set needed to complete Part 2
• Sample tables

Part 1 - Quantitative Exercise

I conducted an analysis of the course evaluations completed by my MSW students over the last three years to determine what differences exist across professors in my program and what difference might exist across semesters.  In the data set provided, you will see two categorical variables: Professor and Semester.  Select Variable View to see what categories exist in each of these two variables.  The remaining variables are continuous and represent course evaluation responses.  The responses were grouped into 7 categories by the university and are presented with the percentage of respondents who marked "Agree" or "Strongly Agree" to the questions included in each category.  For example, if the number under Rapport is 100, it means that 100% of respondents answered Agree or Strongly Agree to the questions included in the category of Rapport.  

 For this study, you will be answering the following research questions:

RQ1: What differences exist in course evaluation responses between professors in the social work department?

RQ2: What differences exist in course evaluation responses between the three semesters of courses offered in the social work department?

RQ3: How are course evaluation responses impacted by professors in the social work department across the three semesters of their program?

RQ4: Is there an interaction between professor and semester that influences the responses to course evaluations in the social work department?

Directions: Open the data set Course Eval Data.sav in SPSS.  Run descriptive analyses so you can report basic information on the variables included in this study. Using the data complete the analyses identified below, create tables of your results in Word (using APA formatting requirements), and write a brief analysis of your results. Note: I'm not looking for you to complete a multivariate analysis with all of the variables and then just interpret a couple.  When I indicate that you should use 2 groups of questions, I really mean compare between those 2 groups, not the whole set of variables.  One thing that would help you is to run a separate analysis for each point below.

1. Identify and run the appropriate statistical test to compare course evaluation results for two groups of questions (e.g. Rapport, Interest) between professors (Hint: make sure you complete the appropriate post hoc tests to fully interpret your results).  What are the results?

2. Identify and run the appropriate statistical test to compare course evaluation results for two other groups of questions between semesters.  What are the results?

3. Identify and run the appropriate statistical test to assess the overall impact of professor and semester on course evaluation results for another category of questions (Hint: if you do this correctly, it will answer research questions 3 & 4-think main effects and interaction effect). What are the results?

4. After all analysis has taken place, write a paragraph summarizing the results from your analysis addressing each of the four research questions.  Why would it be preferable to complete the analysis requested in number 3 rather than completing multiple bi-variate analyses?

Part 2 - Qualitative Exercise

Directions: Please visit the two links associated with this exercise. One of the links is a Word document which contains the actual survey administered by Dr. Werth several years ago to a sample of university faculty and students enrolled in a nursing program at the bachelor's level. The second link is the corresponding SPSS spreadsheet which contains the exact data that was received after the collection period concluded. This is a brief version and does not include all of the questions, but will give you what you need for this assignment.

Review the qualitative data provided by the participants. The question posted to participants was: The greatest challenge I have with online learning is....

Conduct an analysis on the qualitative results. Develop codes, categories, themes, etc. and share your results in an excel document or a Word document. It is common to analyze qualitative results in Excel as it provides flexibility for sorting and adding the number of responses; however, you are welcome to choose any format that works best for you. Please see the resources folder in this module for an example of what your tables might look like for this portion of the assignment.

Please answer the following questions:

1. What themes emerged from the results?

2. Describe the process you used for analyzing the results?

3. In a table, include all of the codes, corresponding categories/themes, and frequency.

Attachment:- Assignment Files.rar