POSSIBLE QUESTIONS FOR FINAL DEFENSE

"Significance level" is a misleading term that many researchers do not fully

understand. This article may help you understand the concept of statistical significance
and the meaning of the numbers produced by The Survey System.

(Source: www.surveysystem.com)

1.) In normal English, "significant" means important, while in Statistics "significant"

means probably true (not due to chance). A research finding may be true
without being important. When statisticians say a result is "highly significant" they
mean it is very probably true. They do not (necessarily) mean it is highly
important.

2.) 5% significance level means we are given 5% error allowance and we are only
95% confident that we made the right decision in rejecting the null hypothesis.

3.) The 95% level comes from academic publications, where a theory usually has to
have at least a 95% chance of being true to be considered worth telling
people about the results.

4.) Some relationships have no description (---------).

Reason: It does not make sense to describe the relationship as “strong,

moderate or low” when the statistical test shows that it is not significant.

5.) Spearman rho is used instead of Pearson r.

Mann Whitney test is used instead of t-test

Reason: the data is not normally distributed or the data are in ordinal scale (i.e.
Strongly Agree – 5, Agree – 4, etc)
 6.) What is normally distributed data?

This can be explained best by giving an example:

Considering the intelligence of the students, only few are poor, only few are bright,
and many are of average intelligence. (refer to figure below)

-------few-------------/------many-----------/-------------few-------
poor students average students bright students

7.) When to reject the Null hypothesis?

Rule:

a) If the computed value is greater than the tabular – reject Ho.

Or

b) If the p-value is less than the level of significance (which is usually set at 0.05 for
social sciences researches)

If the computed value is less than the tabular – do not reject Ho (meaning the
evidence is not sufficient to reject Ho)

8.) What is null hypothesis?

 --- the working hypothesis, statistical guess or assumptions, always states the non-
significance of difference or relationship

- in statistical inference of observed data of a scientific experiment, the null

hypothesis refers to a general or default position: that there is no relationship
between two measured phenomena

9.) statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions

10.) Margin of error- usually set at 5%

Sample Size (n). The formula used to solve for the sample size was as follows:

N
n = -----------------
1 + N (e)2

Margin of error (e)

The margin of error is the most widely misunderstood and misleading concept in
statistics. It’s positively frightening to people who actually understand what it means to
see how it’s commonly used in the media, in conversation, sometimes even by other
scientists!

The basic idea of it is very simple. Most of the time when we’re doing statistics, we’re
doing statistics based on a SAMPLE – that is, the entire population we’re interested
in is difficult to study; so what we try to do is pick a REPRESENTATIVE subset called
a SAMPLE. If the subset is truly representative, then the statistics you generate
using information gathered from the sample will be THE SAME as information
gathered from the population as a whole.

But life is never simple. We NEVER have perfectly representative samples; in fact,
it’s impossible to select a perfectly representative sample. So we do our best to pick
good samples, and we use probability theory to work out a predication of how confident
we can be that the statistics from our sample are representative of the entire population.
That’s basically what the margin of error represents: how well we think that the selected
sample will allow us to predict things about the entire population.
11.) If the result is SIGNIFICANT and there is a STRONG,
MARKED/MODERATE RELATIONSHIP/ASSOCIATION between the
variables then…
a. one variable influences the other variable (i.e. the higher the perception, the
higher the performance)
b. there is a difference (i.e. male is better than female, or female is better than
male)…

we have to test for significance if sample is considered and not the

population… if it is significant, then whatever be the result using the sample,
that will also be the result of the population. You are describing the
population through the samples…

12.) If the result is SIGNIFICANT and there is a WEAK or VERY WEAK

RELATIONSHIP/ASSOCIATION between the variables then…
A. there is an evidence that the variables are weakly or very weakly related.
That is, these variables cannot strongly predict the
outcome/performance of the other variable.

13. If the result is NOT SIGNIFICANT then THE DATA ARE NOT SUFFICIENT
TO CONCLUDE THAT RELATIONSHIP EXISTS between the variables being
paired.

13.) What is the basis of having recommendation numbers 1, 2 3….etc….

support your recommendation… usually the recommendation is based on your
findings and conclusions… In every recommendation, you should know what
particular finding/conclusion that made you recommend such.

14.) what is meant by a positive value of r or a negative value of r?

 negative r means the relationship is inversely proportional (i.e. the higher the
anxiety, the lower the grades)

 positive r means the relationship is directly proportional (i.e. the higher the
interest, the higher the grades).
15.) How are you going to implement your action plan?

16.) Why choose the study?

17.) How did you choose the school to be your sample, say 4 schools out of 7?
(answer…the name of the schools is picked at random…the first 4 schools are
considered the sample schools)…

18.) After having the results, then what will you do?

19.) What is in your research worth sharing or telling other people?

20.) What is the contribution of your findings to the body of knowledge?

21.) How are you going to convince the panel that your results are valid? (it is
valid since the instrument was validated and items are reliable)

22.) How did you validate the questionnaire?

o By presenting it to the experts,
o it was examine by the panel members,
o had the dry-run and test the item consistency reliability using the
Cronbach’s alpha test or spearman rho for test-retest analysis.

- The Cronbach's (alpha) value was calculated to verify the internal consistency

reliability of the items. It is a measure of the extent to which all the variables in

the scale are positively related to each other and its theoretical value varies from

0 to 1. Higher values of alpha are more desirable and a value of 0.70 is

considered acceptable. The calculated Cronbach’s alpha value of the present

questionnaire was 0.914, which indicated that the items were highly reliable.

Reliability of the questionnaire

 The Cronbach Alpha procedure is regarded as the most suitable type of reliability

for survey research where items are not scored right or wrong and where each item

could have different answers (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001, p. 246, 247).

23.) how did you select your respondents?

N
n = -----------------
1 + N (e)2

In identifying the number of sampled students in every school, the

stratified proportional sampling was applied. According to Pagoso, in stratified

proportional sampling method, the distribution of sampling units is proportionate

to the total number of units in each stratum. The bigger the population, the

more sample units are drawn, the less population, the less sample units are

considered.

The selection of students in every class was identified using the systematic
sampling method in which every nth element/student was part of the
sampled element/student.

24.) Read the implication that is reflected in every table, analyze them and
comprehend.

25.) Statistical significance is concerned with the extent to which the findings
in a scientific investigation or research can be generalized from the sample to
the population. It addresses the question, “Can we generalize these findings
from the sample to the population, or are they just simply due to chance or
sampling error?”

26.) Inferential Statistics comprises those procedures for drawing

inferences or making generalizations about characteristics of population
based on partial and incomplete information obtained from a sample of the
 population. It involves techniques which use the obtained sample data to infer to
populations.

27.. memorize a related lit/study used as support in your findings..

Statistical Significance

Table of Contents

What does "statistical significance" really mean?

Many researchers get very excited when they have discovered a "statistically significant" finding, without really
understanding what it means. When a statistic is significant, it simply means that you are very sure that the statistic is
reliable. It doesn't mean the finding is important or that it has any decision-making utility.

For example, suppose we give 1,000 people an IQ test, and we ask if there is a significant difference between male
and female scores. The mean score for males is 98 and the mean score for females is 100. We use an independent
groups t-test and find that the difference is significant at the .001 level. The big question is, "So what?". The difference
between 98 and 100 on an IQ test is a very small difference...so small, in fact, that it's not even important.

Then why did the t-statistic come out significant? Because there was a large sample size. When you have a large
sample size, very small differences will be detected as significant. This means that you are very sure that the
difference is real (i.e., it didn't happen by fluke). It doesn't mean that the difference is large or important. If we had only
given the IQ test to 25 people instead of 1,000, the two-point difference between males and females would not have
been significant.

Significance is a statistical term that tells how sure you are that a difference or relationship exists. To say that a
significant difference or relationship exists only tells half the story. We might be very sure that a relationship exists, but
is it a strong, moderate, or weak relationship? After finding a significant relationship, it is important to evaluate its
strength. Significant relationships can be strong or weak. Significant differences can be large or small. It just depends
on your sample size.

Many researchers use the word "significant" to describe a finding that may have decision-making utility to a client.
From a statistician's viewpoint, this is an incorrect use of the word. However, the word "significant" has virtually
universal meaning to the public. Thus, many researchers use the word "significant" to describe a difference or
relationship that may be strategically important to a client (regardless of any statistical tests). In these situations, the
word "significant" is used to advise a client to take note of a particular difference or relationship because it may be
relevant to the company's strategic plan. The word "significant" is not the exclusive domain of statisticians and either
use is correct in the business world. Thus, for the statistician, it may be wise to adopt a policy of always referring to
"statistical significance" rather than simply "significance" when communicating with the public.

One-Tailed and Two-Tailed Significance Tests

One important concept in significance testing is whether you use a one-tailed or two-tailed test of significance. The
answer is that it depends on your hypothesis. When your research hypothesis states the direction of the difference or
relationship, then you use a one-tailed probability. For example, a one-tailed test would be used to test these null
hypotheses: Females will not score significantly higher than males on an IQ test. Blue collar workers are will not buy
significantly more product than white collar workers. Superman is not significantly stronger than the average person. In
each case, the null hypothesis (indirectly) predicts the direction of the difference. A two-tailed test would be used to
test these null hypotheses: There will be no significant difference in IQ scores between males and females. There will
be no significant difference in the amount of product purchased between blue collar and white collar workers. There is
no significant difference in strength between Superman and the average person. The one-tailed probability is exactly
half the value of the two-tailed probability.

There is a raging controversy (for about the last hundred years) on whether or not it is ever appropriate to use a one-
tailed test. The rationale is that if you already know the direction of the difference, why bother doing any statistical
tests. While it is generally safest to use a two-tailed tests, there are situations where a one-tailed test seems more
appropriate. The bottom line is that it is the choice of the researcher whether to use one-tailed or two-tailed research
questions.

Procedure Used to Test for Significance

Whenever we perform a significance test, it involves comparing a test value that we have calculated to some critical
value for the statistic. It doesn't matter what type of statistic we are calculating (e.g., a t-statistic, a chi-square statistic,
an F-statistic, etc.), the procedure to test for significance is the same.

1. Decide on the critical alpha level you will use (i.e., the error rate you are willing to accept).
2. Conduct the research.
3. Calculate the statistic.
4. Compare the statistic to a critical value obtained from a table.

If your statistic is higher than the critical value from the table:
  Your finding is significant.
 You reject the null hypothesis.
 The probability is small that the difference or relationship happened by chance, and p is less than the critical
alpha level (p < alpha ).

If your statistic is lower than the critical value from the table:

 Your finding is not significant.

 You fail to reject the null hypothesis.
 The probability is high that the difference or relationship happened by chance, and p is greater than the critical
alpha level (p > alpha ).

Modern computer software can calculate exact probabilities for most test statistics. If you have an exact probability
from computer software, simply compare it to your critical alpha level. If the exact probability is less than the critical
alpha level, your finding is significant, and if the exact probability is greater than your critical alpha level, your finding is
not significant. Using a table is not necessary when you have the exact probability for a statistic.