Do these results support the view that aggressive role models promote aggressive behavior?
| EXERCISE 1 - Some simple operations with SPSS |
An experiment on role models of
aggression
In a study of the effects of adult models on the development of aggression, two
groups of children were assessed on aggression after they had viewed the
behavior of either an aggressive or a neutral adult.
Do these results support the view that aggressive role models
promote aggressive behavior?
Opening SPSS and preparing
a data file
Open SPSS.
*If the first screen comes up, click the radio button labeled Type in data and then OK to open the SPSS Data Editor .
In order to compute means and other statistics, you could create two variables called Neutral and Aggressive and enter the scores in the appropriate columns. You can, however, that you proceed and create a grouping variable, with some informative full label such as Adult Behavior, and a shorter name, such as Condition, for use in the Data Editor. The full variable label for the dependent variable might be Aggression Score and the shorter name for the Data Editor could be Score.
Lay the foundations in Variable View first before typing in
the data. Change the Decimals setting to zero to display only whole numbers in
Data View. Decide on two arbitrary code numbers and value
labels for the two conditions, such as 1 = Neutral and 2 =
Aggressive.
Enter these in the Values column.
Click the Data View tab to enter Data View. To
see the value names as you are entering the data, click on Value Labels
in the View menu.
Also, early in the session, you save your work to a file with an informative name using File Save As…
Computing the means and standard deviations
Obtain the means and standard deviations of the aggression scores for the
children exposed to the neutral and aggressive adult models.
• Which group has the higher mean?
• How does the size of the difference between the means compare with the
standard deviations of the scores in the two groups?
Pivoting the output table
Pivot the output table as described so that the headings Neutral, Aggressive
and Total become those of columns rather than rows.
revised 09-09-2009