SPSS Lab Exercise #2: Quantitative Data Analysis & Standardized Instruments

Brief description of hypothetical research project: You are a BSW student intern at the Alpine Valley Assisted Living Facility in Galveston, Texas. There is one Social Worker at the agency, and he will be your Field Instructor. During your orientation, the Field Instructor shares with you that one of the greatest challenges his clients face at the facility are declines in physical and mental health after elderly clients move in to the facility. In particular, many clients appear to experience a significant decrease in self-esteem after relocating to the facility. The Assisted Living Facility is relatively new, and does not offer any specific interventions to address self-esteem. In the educational contract that you and your Field Instructor create, one of your learning tasks includes creating and intervention designed to increase self-esteem (practice) AND evaluate the impact of the intervention (research). In your literature review, you discover research suggests a relationship between volunteerism and self-esteem. You decide to create a Volunteer intervention for clients at the facility, and coordinate volunteer work for the elderly clients to become involved in around the community. In the literature, you also find a scale to measure changes in self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale [RSE]) that you would like to use to evaluate the impact of volunteerism on the self-esteem of the elderly participants at Alpine Valley Assisted Living Facility. Assuming you have already collected informed consent, here is what you must do to complete this hypothetical research project:

DATA ENTRY & ANALYSIS: INSTRUCTIONS • Define variables in SPSS for your RSE scale.

Note: each scale item should be coded as individual variable in SPSS.

• Enter data from the RSE pre- and post-tests in SPSS. • Analyze the RSE data in SPSS by using the appropriate statistical test(s).

Scoring the RSE= The RSE is scored by summing the numbers of each item, yielding a total score of between 10 (lower self-esteem) and 40 (higher self-esteem); The items # 1,3,4,7,10 need to be reversed-coded before calculating total score. Scale was normed on adolescents and adults of various ethnic backgrounds; Reliability demonstrated between .77 and .88; RSE has high construct validity, as has correlated in predicted directions with the Beck Depression Inventory and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Chronbach’s α = [<.60] unacceptable; [.60-.65] undesirable; [.65-.70] minimally acceptable;

[.70-.80] respectable; [.80-.90] very good; [>.90] # items should be shortened (DeVellis, 2003).

METHODOLOGY: Answer the following questions/items on a microsoft word document, and be sure to number your answers… 1. What is the research question? What is your research hypothesis? What statistical test

did you use to test it? 2. What are your independent and dependent variables? 3. Describe your sampling method (choose a specific type of probability or non-probability

sampling method). How did you carry-out sampling? What were the inclusion and/or exclusion criteria for participants? Explain.

4. Cultural competency: Describe how and where you administer the RSE. Explain your answer.

5. How much time (days, weeks, months, etc) will you allow between pre-test and post-test? Explain why you chose that amount of time.

6. How would you (hypothetically) test construct (or criterion) validity of the RSE scale? 7. Run a reliability analysis on your pre-test scale data (make sure this analysis is included on

your SPSS Output file). How reliable is the scale? 8. Write-up the results of your study (see document in SPSS Lab 2 folder “Template for

Writing-Up Paired Sample t-test” and your Output file to format/answer this question).