A researcher conducted a study of commitment to a romantic relationship and how much attention a person pays to attractive alternatives. In this study, participants were shown a set of slides of attractive individuals. At the start of the results section, the researcher notes, "The self-reports on the Attentiveness to Alternative Index and the time spent actually inspecting the attractive opposite-sex slides...were positively skewed, so logarithmic transformations of the data were performed." Explain what is being described here (and why it is being done) to a person who understands ordinary parametric statistics but has never heard of data transformations. Choose the correct answer below. A. The sampling distribution was not normal, so the logarithm was taken of each score to make the distribution more normal. This procedure was used because the distribution was very strongly skewed to the right. This procedure keeps the order of the scores the same, so hypothesis tests can be legitimately performed on the new data. B. The sampling distribution was not normal, so a mathematical procedure was applied to the distribution to make it more normal. Hypothesis tests can be legitimately performed on the new data since they meet the normality assumption. The results will not be applicable to the original data, but this procedure is an acceptable alternative. C. The sampling distribution was not normal, so a mathematical procedure was applied to the distribution to make it more normal. This procedure altered the order of the scores a little bit, but meeting the normality assumption is more important, so hypothesis tests can be legitimately performed on the new data.
A researcher conducted a study of commitment to a romantic relationship and how much attention a person pays to attractive alternatives. In this study, participants were shown a set of slides of attractive individuals. At the start of the results section, the researcher notes, "The self-reports on the Attentiveness to Alternative Index and the time spent actually inspecting the attractive opposite-sex slides...were positively skewed, so logarithmic transformations of the data were performed." Explain what is being described here (and why it is being done) to a person who understands ordinary parametric statistics but has never heard of data transformations.
Choose the correct answer below.
A.
The sampling distribution was not normal, so the logarithm was taken of each score to make the distribution more normal. This procedure was used because the distribution was very strongly skewed to the right. This procedure keeps the order of the scores the same, so hypothesis tests can be legitimately performed on the new data.
B.
The sampling distribution was not normal, so a mathematical procedure was applied to the distribution to make it more normal. Hypothesis tests can be legitimately performed on the new data since they meet the normality assumption. The results will not be applicable to the original data, but this procedure is an acceptable alternative.
C.
The sampling distribution was not normal, so a mathematical procedure was applied to the distribution to make it more normal. This procedure altered the order of the scores a little bit, but meeting the normality assumption is more important, so hypothesis tests can be legitimately performed on the new data.
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