The demographic information for the research participants was gathered from district administrative records, with students classified by ethnicity. The sample included 17% Black, 18% Hispanic, 9% Asian, and 56% White pupils, both male and female seventh graders in middle school. Participants’ needs were diverse, including limited English proficiency, special education, and eligibility for free or reduced lunch. The investigation focuses on comparing the mean GPAs of these four ethnic groups, demonstrating that they all have similar average GPAs.
In this research task, I will use descriptive statistics to examine the data since they are good at describing certain features of the sample group. This strategy is especially useful for gathering demographic information from students and tracking changes in their grade point averages (GPAs) over time. Descriptive statistics will allow me to compare variables more easily, and I will be able to generate a score distribution by using several data points. The data will be summarized using central tendency measures such as the mean, median, and mode (Kaliyadan & Kulkarni, 2019).
The hypothesis will seek to determine whether there is a significant association between ethnicity and GPA scores, as well as whether the observed data is consistent with the null hypothesis’ expectations. The categorical variables indicating students’ ethnicities are Black, Hispanic, Asian, and White, whereas the ordinal variable of student GPA indicates whether their academic ability has improved or declined (Brown et al., 2019).
In this statistical research, I used a sample of 105 kids’ data from several school districts, omitting multiracial pupils who did not identify with the four major racial/ethnic groupings. This concentration improves the clarity and relevancy of the results. Statistical significance is important in research because it helps assess whether observed sample features are random or reflect genuine population tendencies. Hypothesis testing is used to determine a significance level, and the p-value (which ranges from 0 to 1) shows the likelihood of witnessing the sample findings under the null hypothesis.
In this study, a p-value less than 05 would result in the rejection of the null hypothesis, but a p-value larger than 05 would imply insufficient evidence to reject it (Kwak, 2023). The data showed a p-value of 0.825, which was much higher than the 05 threshold, failing to reject the null hypothesis, indicating that there were no statistically significant variations in GPAs among the ethnic groups studied.
Furthermore, the effect size was calculated to determine the strength of the effect in hypothesis testing. Factors like as sample size and alpha were shown to have a positive influence on effect size, but population standard deviation and standard errors had a negative impact. According to the effect size criterion, the results indicated an F statistic of F(4, 100) = 0.376, which supported the conclusion that no significant differences existed between the groups (Riffenburgh, 2019). Thus, the data indicate that students’ GPAs do not differ substantially across the four ethnic groups examined in this study.
PSYC FPX 4600 Assessment 3: Brown, T. H., O’Rand, A. M., & Adkins, D. E. (2019). Race-Ethnicity and Health Trajectories. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 53(3), 359–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146512455333
PSYC FPX 4600 Assessment 3: Escobar-Soler, C., Berrios, R., Peñaloza-Díaz, G., Melis-Rivera, C., Caqueo-Urízar, A., Ponce-Correa, F., & Flores, J. (2024). Effectiveness of Self-Affirmation Interventions in Educational Settings: A Meta-Analysis. Healthcare, 12(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12010003
PSYC FPX 4600 Assessment 3: Ibrahim, M. F., Wan Ismail, W. S., Nik Jaafar, N. R., Mohd Mokhtaruddin, U. K., Ong, H. Y., Abu Bakar, N. H., & Mohd Salleh Sahimi, H. (2022). Depression and Its Association With Self-Esteem and Lifestyle Factors Among School-Going Adolescents in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13(PMC9218174). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.913067
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