ED 595: SURVEY RESEARCH
MINIPROJECT # 7: DATA ANALYSIS &
INTERPRETATION
DUE DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 2014
DIRECTIONS: For this project, your Project Group will complete the following steps to actually
conduct a basic analysis of your data. Please type your writeups for this miniproject which should be
in the 3-5 page range, but also provide tables and/or figures summarizing your data analysis that
created consistent with APA style. More detail is always better than less explanation. Put all parts of
the writeup into a single document.
STEP 1 – You will submit a PAPER copy of your final survey.
 Also provide an electronic copy of your final composite data set that has been cleaned.
STEP 2 -- Conduct the 5 basic types of data analyses indicated below.
 Frequency Analysis and Measures of Central Tendency & Dispersion – develop a
table listing items broken down by the percentage of the entire sample who chose each
response category and summarize means and standard deviations for each item.
 Correlational Analysis – assesses the relationships between items on your survey or
instrument. Correlations range between -1 and +1, with the larger the magnitude of the
correlation demonstrating a stronger relationship. The valence of a correlation reveals
the nature of the relationship. A positive relationship means as Variable A increases, so
does Variable B, whereas a negative relationship means that as Variable A increases,
Variable B decreases. I will send you a copy of a correlation table for a manuscript
submitted for publication but also consult your APA Manual.
 Analysis of Variance -- use 2 or more demographic and/or background variables to
conduct analysis of variance between groups. For example, you may choose gender as
one of your independent or grouping variables, with males representing one group and
females the other. Univariate analysis of variance may then be conducted to see how
responses for males and females differ for each item and/or dimension. An ANOVA
compares male and female means one variable at a time. If you are comparing group
means for 2 or more variables, you would typically use MANOVA that can compare
multiple variable means across gender at the same time. However, your number of
participants may be too small to get valid results, so we’ll just do multiple ANOVAs.
Construct a table to display means, SDs and ANOVA results following APA style.
 Factor Analysis – If you have Likert scale items, particularly if you are developing an
instrument or are just trying to group items to look at broader concepts in your data, you
want to conduct exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify whether items group
together based on conceptual, empirical or practical predictions. EFA should also be
effective in helping you assess the effectiveness of your item construction to tap
underlying dimensions. EFA is much more of an inductive approach to data analysis.
Tables 2-4 of the attached manuscript reports factor analysis of various scales. Construct
1 or more table to display your EFA results consistent with APA style.
 Internal Consistency Reliability – Additionally, for whatever factors that emerge during
EFA, calculate the Cronbach’s Alpha internal consistency value for each factor to
determine if those items have sufficient reliability to promote validity. You’re looking
for Alpha values > .70 and the higher the better.
STEP 3 -- Construct tables and/or figures to summarize the findings of your data analysis.
 All tables should be constructed consistent with APA Style.
 Your tables may use either a portrait or a landscape orientation, depending on which
best fits your data analysis reporting needs.
 You can probably report your frequencies, means and SDs in one or more tables. If you
have several distinct sections to your survey, you may want to report each section on a
different table. The same table can be continued on additional pages as needed.
 Your correlational data should be reported on one or more separate tables. Again you
can correlate all items with each other, or you can do intercorrelations separately for
each section of your survey, depending on how you decide to report your results.
 Each series of analyses of variance should probably be on a separate table, with means
and SDs of each group reported along with “F” and “p” values and degrees of freedom.
 Use the examples provided and the APA Manual to construct your EFA tables.
 Provide Cronbach’s alpha reliability values at the bottom of your EFA tables (see
example).
STEP 4 -- Writeup your Results and provide a Discussion of what they mean such as is typically
found in most journal articles.
 Results sections are constructed around analyses, so you would probably have 4 sections
in your Results, corresponding to (a) frequency, means and SDs, (b) correlational, (c)
analysis of variance, and (d) exploratory factor analysis results.
 Each section should summarize your results and show the audience your actual data
summarized in scientific format focusing on significant results. Tables are placed in the
back of manuscripts in a separate section, but they are referred to in the Results writeup
to indicate what tables summarize what data (i.e., see Table 5).
 Your Discussion is typically organized by hypothesis, or if you have made no
hypotheses, then it reflects major content-based categories of findings. Thus, each
section of your Discussion summarizes data across all 4 types of analyses that support
and/or refute your hypotheses or are consistent/inconsistent with major categories of
findings.
 You should also include a Future Research Directions section that discusses what you
might do if you conducted the same study again in the future. Would your methodology
stay the same or change? If changes are needed, particularly related to your survey,
what would they be and why? Additionally, what would be the next step to followup
this research in the future?