Research design
Whether in a scholarly or practitioner setting, good research and data analysis should have the benefit of peer feedback. For this Discussion, you will perform an article critique on tests. Be sure and remember that the goal is to obtain constructive feedback to improve the research and its interpretation, so please view this as an opportunity to learn from one another.
Review the Learning Resources and the media programs related to t tests.
Search for and select a quantitative article specific to your discipline and related to t tests. Help with this task may be found in the Course guide and assignment help linked in this week’s Learning Resources. Also, you can use as a guide the Research Design Alignment Table located in this week’s Learning Resources
Write a 3- to 5-paragraph critique of the article. In your critique, include responses to the following:
Which is the research design used by the authors?
Why did the authors use this t test?
Do you think it’s the most appropriate choice? Why or why not?
Did the authors display the data?
Do the results stand alone? Why or why not?
Did the authors report effect size? If yes, is this meaningful?
Sample Answer
This article investigates the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation in reducing test anxiety among college students. The authors employ a between-subjects research design, where participants are randomly assigned to either a mindfulness meditation intervention group or a control group. This design allows for causal inferences to be drawn about the impact of the intervention compared to the control group.
The decision to utilize a t-test in this study seems appropriate. Since the research compares the means of two independent groups (intervention vs. control) on a single continuous variable (test anxiety scores), an independent-samples t-test is a suitable statistical tool.