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Assignment 1

This document provides instructions for students to complete Assignment #1 for the PSYC 3000 course. It involves analyzing data from a study using the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) questionnaire. Students are asked to open an SPSS data file called AQData.sav containing responses from 233 participants. Using descriptive statistics functions in SPSS, students are to generate output on the distributions of the five AQ subscale variables and answer questions related to identifying outliers and interpreting the descriptive statistics.

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meganbb02
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42 views

Assignment 1

This document provides instructions for students to complete Assignment #1 for the PSYC 3000 course. It involves analyzing data from a study using the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) questionnaire. Students are asked to open an SPSS data file called AQData.sav containing responses from 233 participants. Using descriptive statistics functions in SPSS, students are to generate output on the distributions of the five AQ subscale variables and answer questions related to identifying outliers and interpreting the descriptive statistics.

Uploaded by

meganbb02
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Assignment # 1 PSYC 3000 A

Due Monday Oct. 30, 2023

Descriptive Statistics
For this assignment you will be using the following data file: AQData.sav.

This file contains data for 233 participants who responded to a bunch of questionnaires
(including the AQ) for a study that was done for my lab.

The autism-spectrum quotient (AQ) is a self-report questionnaire developed by Baron-Cohen,


Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, and Clubley (2001). Although it can be used to help discern the nature of
the differences in autism-related symptomatology that exist across clinical and non-clinical samples,
much of the research conducted with the AQ has served to help pioneer the notion that autistic-like traits
are present to various degrees throughout the general population. Baron-Cohen et al. (2001) designed the
50-item AQ to be consistent with a five-facet conceptual model of autistic trait symptomology (i.e.,
social skill, attention switching, attention to detail, communication, and imagination) with 10 items per
facet.

To open the file in SPSS, start the program. Locate your file in ‘Recent Files’ or click on ‘Open another
File’ and browse the computer to find the AQData.sav file (then click on it). If the data itself is not
visible when this file opens up, you will need to click on ‘Data View’ (located at the very bottom left-
hand side of the SPSS window).
[If you are on campus, you can get to SPSS by logging onto a computer, clicking on the start button
(located at the very bottom left-hand side of the screen) and finding ‘IBM SPSS Statistics 27’ (or maybe
now 28) on the program list.]

1From the ‘Analyze’ menu (see the bar at the very top of the screen to find ‘Analyze’ and click once on
it), choose the ‘Descriptive Statistics’ option, then the ‘Explore…’ option.

Click on each of the five AQ subscale variables (these have already been aggregated over the 10 items
in each facet) one-by-one and move them into the ‘Dependent List:’ box by clicking the arrow.

Click on ‘Statistics...’. Click on ‘Percentiles’ but do not make any other changes. Click on ‘Continue’.
Next, click on ‘Plots...’. Click off ‘Stem-and-leaf’ but click on ‘Histogram’. Leave the rest as it is and click
on ‘Continue’. Click on ‘OK’.

Then print out the Output or save it as a .pdf file (while in the Output screen itself, go to the ‘File’
menu and select ‘Export’, then ‘Browse’ to indicate where to save it and give that .doc or .pdf file a
name) and use it to answer the questions below.
Using the outputs from these analyses (i.e., everything you’ll need is somewhere in
there – find it), answer the following:
(i) For each of the five AQ subscale variables, write up a short summary (or make a table with
one row per variable) indicating the values of the mean (M) with the 95% confidence
interval (95% C.I.) values, the median (Med), the standard deviation (SD), the minimum
(Min) and maximum (Max) values.

(ii) Consider the distributions (and the descriptive statistics from Part (i)) for each of the five AQ
subscale variables: Which subscale’s distribution has the most spread? Which subscale’s
distribution is the most skewed? Which subscale’s distribution looks the most bell-
shaped? [Note that there might be two equally decent answers for both most skewed and
most bell-shaped that will be taken into account when marking this assignment.]

(iii) Outliers seem to be evident in all of the box plots but especially in the one for the
Communication subscale. Report the three quartiles values for this subscale variable.
Then, compute (i.e., “by hand” but using whatever you need from the output) the two
inter-quartile-range-based criterion values that were used to identify those outliers.

(iv) The Min and Max Communication subscale scores were 10 (for Subject 32) and 33 (for
Subject 103), respectively. Compute (i.e., “by hand” but using whatever you need from
the output) the z-scores associated with each of them. Would each of these two values
also meet (or not) the z-score-based criterion for identifying them as outliers?

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