COMM 420 Final Project Instructions
You have been hired by a tablet company to assist them with identifying their potential customers for a new tablet that they are piloting for the holiday season.
Specifically, you are in charge of examining the dataset “Final Project Dataset”, which contains information on 500 potential customers in the San Diego. These are people who your company believes are a target market, because of San Diego’s size and growing economic potential. Your company paid a surveying and data collection firm to obtain this dataset, and it is your job to work through it and then write-up your results using APA formatting and then to clearly summarize your findings in plain language (assume Management doesn’t understand all the technical stats language). Management’s instructions to you are simple: They want you to answer the question: “Who are our potential customers?”
Specifics
There are three parts to this project:
Part 1:
Part 1 Involves you employing five statistical procedures using the dataset. These tests should help illuminate something about the potential customers, something that will help your company tailor its products and better understand its clients. The five tests you must use are the following:
Descriptive statistics (run for at least 4 different demographic variables)
t-test (two t-tests required)
ANOVA (two ANOVA tests required)
Correlation (two correlations required)
Chi-Square (two chi-square tests required)
It is your job to assess the data and to employ the correct test given the types of data (hint: level of measurement for both variables) you have been provided in the dataset.
For example, you might report on a sex difference, and would need to select a t-test to complete that analysis; you would also need to say whether or not the sex difference was significant, using SPSS for this as well.
Part 2:
Part 2 requires you to write-up your findings using APA formatting (see your labs). You should have a heading for each test and then the results of the test you ran.
Part 3:
Part 3 requires you to write up your results in a straightforward, easy-to-read manner (i.e., a report). Management has hired you to work through all the complicated statistics and analyses, and they just want to read a tight, well-written summary of who their potential customers are.
You should make appropriate conclusions given your analyses from Part 2 and provide all the results in a non-technical, easy-to-read manner.
That means that this part of your write-up will avoid including all the technical stats numbers from your SPSS output and just stick to simply explaining what the test tells us about who the potential customers are.
Project Format
Although this project offers you a vast amount of freedom in what you could report, you should stick to the following format within your report:
Brief Introduction: There should be a brief introduction to the report, previewing what will be covered and why the analyses were undertaken in the first place. This should remind management of your task and end with a quick preview of what will be covered in report (1 short paragraph)
Descriptives: The next section (one paragraph) should report on the descriptive statistics (or the “vitals”) of the sample. For example, How many people in the dataset? What are their average ages? Their sex percentages? Mean or median income?, etc. (1 paragraph)
Run descriptive statistics on at least 4 variables that help you describe who is in the sample (e.g., sex, age, etc.).
For each variable, you will include only the correct form of central tendency (hint: based on level of measurement, presence of outliers), and include some variability stats for more context for a few of the variables.
Tests of Difference: The third section will have two subsections: t-test and ANOVA analyses.
t-tests: You will run and report on 2 independent samples t-tests in this paragraph. Address each one independently and not together. (1 paragraph)
Was the test significant?
What, if any group differences did you find? If so, which group was higher/lower and by how much (so make sure to include the group means)?
Remember, being clear and straightforward means giving relevant info that helps the reader understand what you did. The key here is that you performed the correct test and interpret it correctly more than whether results were significant.
If something is non-significant, that might still be interesting to talk about in the conclusion section, so report it anyway, but then address what it may mean later.
ANOVAs: You will run and report on 2 one-way ANOVAs in this paragraph. Address each one independently and not together. (1 paragraph)
Was the test significant?
What, if any group differences did you find? If so, which group was higher/lower and by how much (so make sure to include the group means)?
Bivariate Correlations: You will run and report on 2 bivariate correlation tests. Address each on independently and not together. (1 paragraph)
Again, was that association significant or not?
Was there anything that was associated to something else? How strong was the association?
Management wants to know it all (in non-stats language).
Remember, if something is non-significant, that might still be interesting to talk about in the discussion/conclusion section, so report it anyway, but then address what it may mean later.
Chi-Square: You will run and report on 2 chi-square tests. Address each one independently and not together (1 paragraph).
Again, was that predicted relationship significant or not?
Conclusion: The final paragraph should be your conclusions as research team leader. What are the takeaways from the dataset? Was anything surprising or particularly interesting? This is your time to make recommendations about how the company can appeal to this San Diego market, given this data. Also, you will want to wrap up your report with a few directions for future study, or possibly propose a product line or a marketing strategy given your analyses. This is an important part.
Spend some time on this part and explain the importance of the findings you explained earlier.
Other Details:
The company wants your report written in strict APA format, using the following details:
Times New Roman font @ 12pt size
Double-spaced
1” margins on all sides
A title page with a title, your name, and Arizona State University listed below your name
Provide bold and centered headings for each of the major sections
Page numbers in the upper right-hand corner (also in Times New Roman 12pt font)
Do not put any running head or header/footer on the document (aside from the page numbers)
Must be in .docx format when submitted
Graphs/charts: You must generate and include at least three graphs/charts that help accentuate your conclusions.
These graphs/charts should be made using SPSS, and copied into your document at the back/Appendix, on their own pages.
These graphs/charts should be referenced directly in the text of your report (e.g., “See Chart 1 for details on the sex breakdown”).
These charts/graphs should include things like pie/bar/line charts or scatterplots.
You CANNOT post regular output tables (e.g., a t-test table) from SPSS, those do not count.
Finally, in addition to three graphs, you will include the pertinent output tables in an Appendix at the end of the document. This means that you should include output tables for descriptive statistics, two t-tests, two ANOVAs, two correlations, and two chi-square tests.
Data File Notes
You might see some confusing or new values/labels for some of the variables; here is what they mean:
IAP = “Inappropriate” (the respondent did not feel he/she needed to answer)
NA = “Not Applicable” (the respondent did not feel the question was relevant to him/her)
DK = “Don’t Know” (the respondent did not feel he/she could answer the question)
R = “Respondent” (you will see this under many of the “Labels” for questions)
WWW = “World Wide Web” (an old-school term for “the Internet”)
Grading Breakdown
Intro – 3 pts
Descriptives: 8pts
t-tests: 10pts (report on 2 of them)
Anova: 10pts (report on 2 of them)
Correlation: 10pts (report on 2 of them)
Chi-Square: 10pts (report on 2 of them)
Conclusion: 15pts
Graph/charts: 6pts
Grammar/spelling/Organization: 3pts
TOTAL: 75
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