The purpose of this assignment is to help you become more familiar with interpreting the results of correlation coefficients in psychological research. There are several types of correlation coefficients, but the most common one encountered is the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, designated by the letter r. This coefficient is used with ratio or interval data, whereas with ordinal date, the Spearman correlation coefficient is used (rs). With these correlation coefficients, at least two measures are made on the same participants, and is a common way of analyzing survey data, including scores on personality tests and similar measures. The study:.
A study by Riva, Sacchi, and Brambilla (2015) addressed whether giving slot machines more human characteristics was associated with more gambling. It had been noted in previous research that gamblers often verbalize to the machines, and in some cases, the machines emit sounds, including some sounds like human speech. These authors developed their research from a cognitive perspective, that being trying to assess whether gamblers believed that the machines demonstrated some form of "thinking" in determining or producing gambling outcomes. If so, these machines might be seen as being more human.
These researchers had two groups of participants, 15 regular slot machine players and 15 non-regular but occasional, players. Some of their analyses involved t-tests in assessing differences between groups, and in their preliminary study of the entire sample, they found that attributing human-like minds to machines was related to frequency of play, r = .63, p < .001.
Answer/Address the following:.
State an appropriate set of hypotheses in statistical terms. Pay attention to whether your hypotheses are directional or non-directional.
Note that for b and c below, degrees of freedom need to be known. How many df are there?
What is the critical value in a table for a significant correlation at the .01 level?
What is the critical value in a table for a significant correlation at the .05 level?
Based on your hypotheses, what is your conclusion/decision? State this in both hypothesis testing terms (accept/reject) and words.