Question 1 (43 marks)

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of both mortality and morbidity globally (Di Cesare, 2024). Research has consistently demonstrated that regular engagement in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) is linked to a reduced risk of developing CVD (e.g., Moore et al., 2012). In light of this, the Health Promotion Board (HPB) recommends at least 150 minutes of MVPA per week to help lower the risk of CVD. However, data from the Singapore National Steps Challenge revealed that participants only managed to achieve an average of 99 minutes of MVPA per week (Chong, 2022), suggesting that the average Singapore resident engages in substantially less MVPA than recommended. Therefore, the HPB wants to develop interventions to increase MVPA engagement among Singapore residents.

Imagine you have been hired by HPB as a research consultant. Your task is to develop an intervention to increase the amount of time people spend engaging in MVPA. Then, you are to design an experiment to find out whether the intervention is effective. In designing this experiment, limit the independent variable to two levels/conditions and the dependent variable to a single variable that is measured with an interval/ratio scale (or reasonably assumed to be so).

Describe the intervention and the experiment. In your response, you must provide sufficient details so that anyone reading your response will be able to replicate your experiment. This includes but is not limited to the following: How you will manipulate the independent variable, how you will measure the dependent variable, your population of interest and why you are interested in studying that population, your sample size and the rationale for choosing that sample size, the exact procedure for sampling from the population of interest, the duration of the study, the study procedure, and any other considerations you deem relevant in designing this experiment. You should also describe clearly one potential source of confound and show how it will interfere with your ability to determine causality if it is not controlled for. Discuss how you will control for it in your experiment.

After describing the intervention and the experiment, identify the parametric test you will use to analyse the data from your experiment and explain why that is the appropriate parametric test. (You do not need to provide data or conduct the analysis.) Finally, select two different aspects of your study and evaluate them on their feasibility. An example would be to evaluate how easy or difficult it would be to recruit participants for the study. (Note that because difficulties in participant recruitment has already been given as an example, you may not use it again in your response.)

The maximum word count for this question is 600 (anything beyond 600 words will be disregarded); there is no minimum word count. State the word count for this question at the end of your response. Answers should be in full sentences and not point form. The use of academic references is not compulsory for this question but if you use any, include the references (in APA style) after the word count.

References

Chong, C. (2022, January 21). Steep fall in physical activity during circuit breaker period: HPB. The Straits Times. https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/steep-fall-in-physical- activity-during-circuit-breaker-period-health-promotion-board

Di Cesare, M., Perel, P., Taylor, S., Kabudula, C., Bixby, H., Gaziano, T. A., McGhie, D. V., Mwangi, J., Pervan, B., Narula, J., Pineiro, D., & Pinto, F. J. (2024). The heart of the world, Global Heart, 19(1), https://doi.org/10.5334/gh.1288

Moore, S. C., Patel, A. V., Matthews, C. E., Berrington, de Gonzalez. A., Park, Y., Katki, H. A., Linet, M. S., Weiderpass, E., Visvanathan, K., Helzlsouer, K. J., Thun, M., Gapstur, S. M., Hartge, P., & Lee, I-M. (2012). Leisure time physical activity of moderate to vigorous intensity and mortality: A large pooled cohort analysis. PLoS Med 9(11), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001335

Question 2 (57 marks)

Educational research shows that students achieve better learning outcomes when they actively engage in classroom activities (e.g., working on problem sets in pairs or groups) than when they passively listen to a lecture. However, many instructors still rely on traditional lectures, often pointing to students’ complaints about active learning as the primary reason for not transiting to active learning. A group of researchers conducted a two-week study to a) confirm the benefits of active learning over traditional lecture, and b) investigate whether the reason students are resistant to active learning is that they misjudge how much they learn from active learning compared to traditional lecture.

The researchers randomly assigned students to two groups. Group 1 was taught standard deviation, a basic statistical concept, by Instructor A using active learning in the first week, followed by normal distribution, another basic statistical concept, through traditional lecture in the second week. Group 2, on the other hand, was taught standard deviation by Instructor B using traditional lecture in the first week, and then normal distribution using active learning in the second week. Table 1 summarises the research design.

Table 1

Group Week 1: Standard Deviation Week 2: Normal Distribution
Group 1: Instructor A Active Learning Traditional Lecture
Group 2: Instructor B Traditional Lecture Active Learning

At the end of each session, students rated their agreement to the statement “I feel like I learned a lot from this class” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). (For the purpose of this assignment, assume the ratings are interval scale of measurement.) They also completed a 10-item multiple-choice test to assess their understanding of the concept taught that week.

The data from this study can be found in HBC203 TMA01 Dataset.csv. (For Mac users: Please use a web browser other than Safari to download the .csv file from Canvas. Otherwise, you may be unable to open the downloaded file.) Table 2 provides a brief description of each variable in the dataset.

Table 2

Variable Description
participant Participant identity number
instructor The instructor (A or B) the student was assigned to
score_sd Test score for the standard deviation topic
score_nd Test score for the normal distribution topic
rating_sd Rating of the standard deviation class
rating_nd Rating of the normal distribution class

Part A (32 marks)

Conduct the most appropriate statistical tests to address the following research questions:

1. Was there a significant difference in the students’ test scores for the topic of standard deviation between the active learning and the traditional lecture group?
2. Was there a significant difference in the students’ test scores for the topic of normal distribution between the active learning and the traditional lecture group?
3. Was there a significant difference in the students’ ratings of how much they felt they learned from the standard deviation class between the active learning and the traditional lecture group?
4. Was there a significant difference in the students’ ratings of how much they felt they learned from the normal distribution class between the active learning and the traditional lecture group?

For each research question:

Identify the most appropriate statistical test to conduct. Explain why it is the most appropriate statistical test by providing all the relevant reasons. The reasons should be explained fully (e.g., you should state how many and what the levels of independent variable are). Then, assuming all the assumptions of the statistical test you identified are met and there are no concerns about small sample size, analyse the data using jamovi. Show the jamovi output by copying and pasting all the output necessary to interpret the results in your answer. To copy the output, either take a screenshot of the output (preferred) or right click on the respective table(s) and select Copy from the dropdown menu. (Use an alpha level of .05two-tailed to determine statistical significance. In your analysis, you may assume that the ratings are measured with an interval scale.)

Present each research question separately and in sequence (i.e., RQ1, followed by RQ2 and so on).

Part B (25 marks)

Report the results from the four analyses in Part A in APA format. Interpret the results in relation to the researchers’ two goals. In other words, do the results a) confirm the benefits of active learning over traditional lecture, and b) show that students misjudge how much they learn from active learning compared to traditional lecture? Then, discuss plausible explanations for the results. Use at least one academic paper (i.e., journal article) to support your explanations. Include the references (in APA style) at the end of your response.

Note. Unlike Question 1, there is no word limit for this question. However, please ensure that you provide succinct and relevant responses. Irrelevant points would reduce the quality of your responses which would affect your score negatively.

Answers to Above Questions on Statistics and Data Analysis

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