Exercise Sheet III

Please read the following questions carefully. Use the dataset provided on Moodle for all
questions where you shouldn’t collect the data or think about the measurement by yourself.
Report only relevant data and present them in APA style. When you report and interpret your
results, be as concise and precise as possible.

Good luck and have fun practicing!

1. Identify level of measurement and appropriate use of central tendency for the variables
depicted in the following diagrams. Where appropriate, report the formula for central
tendency.

a) Figure 1
Gender

b) Figure 2
Race

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c) Figure 3
Temperature

2. Explain whether the correlation between significance level and sample size is positive or
negative.

3. Select three variables from the dataset – choose wisely – to examine group differences.
Consider whether you have to do anything with the variables before you can make
comparisons.
a) Test the selected variables with regards to statistical significant differences in gender
(V214).
b) Test the three variables regarding differences in education (V215).
c) Test the selected variables with regards to differences in income (V216).

4. Explain the idea of controls in correlation or regression analyses.

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5. For the following task, consider that you may need to compute indexes / scales or
recode variables. Please report all pertinent info (Betas, incremental and total models R-
squared etc.)
A group of researchers want to learn more about social media use and what explains
this phenomenon. To do so, they look at the available data (V46-V57) and identify
different factors. They decide to use the strongest factor as dependent variable (Hint:
Build an index with the strongest indicators, we would suggest using up to eight items
but check internal consistency). Following this, the researchers use the calculated data
to shed light on some research questions.
a) Do age (V213), gender (V214), education (V215) and income (V216) predict the social
media use phenomenon?
b) Drawing on prior work, the researchers are interested in testing whether extroverted
personality traits (V189, V191) predict social media use while controlling for the effect of
people's demographic characteristics.
c) Last, the researchers would also like to know about the potential influence of incidental
online news exposure (V29-V36) in explaining people's social media use. Given what is
known from prior analyses, the researchers decide to control for subjects' demographics
and personality characteristics. What do the researchers learn overall?

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