To talk about Ss sitting 2.2 seats away is meaningless. No one sits ".2" seats away from anyone else (unless it's on a bench). They either sat in chair 1 or chair 2 etc. If we called them chair A, chair B etc. it would be the same thing but no one would ever report the Ss as sitting A.2 chairs away. I think that it's perfectly OK to treat discrete data as continuous when there is a clear underlying continuum (e.g. age in years) but not when there is no real continuum. Had they asked people to sit in a bench & measured the distance in cms I wouldn't have had a problem with the analysis, however in this case I do. Maybe I'm just overly fussy but I think that their design doesn't fully meet the requirements for a parametric analysis.
-Don. Wallace Dixon said: > Don, > You lost me on this one. How is it NOT interval, even ratio, data? > I > can see it would be easy enough to have qualms about restriction in > range, etc., or even qualms about using NHST at all, but I don't get how > distance in "seats away" isn't ratio? Sorry for being so dense. > > Wally Dixon > > > > > On 8/23/04 1:12 PM, "Don Allen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I quite agree, and I wish it were the only lapse in APS editing. In >> Holland et al. "Don't Stand So Close to Me: The Effects of >> Self-Construal on Interpersonal Closeness" ( Psychological Science >> Volume 15 Issue 4 Page 237 - April 2004 ). They report the following >> methodology: >> >> "After completing the lexical decision task, the participants were >> asked to take a seat in a waiting area, ostensibly to give the >> experimenter some time to prepare the second part of the experiment. >> Four chairs were lined up in the waiting area, with a jacket hanging >> over the chair on the extreme left. This jacket suggested the presence >> of another person (Macrae & Johnston, 1998). The dependent variable >> was the distance, *** in number of chairs, *** (my emphasis) between >> the chair with the jacket on it and the chair that the participant >> chose to sit on." >> >> They then analyse the data as follows: >> >> "To examine the effects of self-construal and gender, we performed a 2 >> (self-construal: independent vs. control)2 (gender: female vs. male) >> between-subjects analysis of variance on the distance between the >> participant's chair and the occupied chair. As expected, participants >> in the independent-self condition sat further away (M=2.07) than >> participants in the control condition (M=1.66), F(1, 73)=8.57, p<.01. >> 1 No main effect of gender was obtained. Also, no interaction effect >> was found." >> >> Now I have a hard time accepting that "number of chairs" is interval >> data. A non parametric analysis would have been far more appropriate. >> Editorial rigour just ain't what it used to be. >> >> -Don. >> >> >> >> Stephen Black said: >>>> Ronald C. Blue wrote: >>>> >>>>> http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2004/pr040819.cfm >>>> First Solid Evidence that the Study of Music Promotes Intellectual >>>> Development >>> >>> and Chris Greeen commented: >>> >>>> Now none of this is out and out "wrong," >>> >>> Oh, it's wrong all right. See earlier exchanges on this "solid >>> evidence", between Ken Steele and me, for example, at >>> http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg10749.html >>> >>> Stephen >>> >>> ___________________________________________________ >>> Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 >>> Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 >>> Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 >>> Canada >>> >>> Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy >>> TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at >>> http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm >>> _______________________________________________ >>> >>> >>> --- >>> You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> To unsubscribe send a blank email to >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Wallace E. Dixon, Jr. | > Chair and Associate Professor | Understanding atomic physics is > of Psychology | child's play, compared with > Department of Psychology | understanding child's play. > East Tennessee State University | -Albert Einstein > Johnson City, TN 36714 | > (423) 439-6656 | > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe send a blank email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
