Research Methods - past exam paper - Assignment Example

He explained that variance process explains the relationship between the dependant and independent variables leading to an outcome while the process theory explains the patterns of events that led to the outcome of an event. Selection bias is the process of selecting group of objects or individuals in a manner so that the selected sample does not represent a particular segment of population. In such a case, the estimated sample would be biased in nature due to random approach of selecting the sample size.

Selection bias is likely to occur more commonly as a result of the random sampling method. The given summary statistics could be used to interpret and compare the average scores of the class in the two tests and also comment on the dispersion of the scores from their average scores, the comparison among the highest and lowest scores in those two tests. The mean values suggest that average score for Test2 is more than Test1. The standard deviation shows that more number of students has variation from average score in Test1 as compared to that in Test2.

The median suggests that the mid-point score for all students arranged in ascending order for both the tests is same. The 1st quartile shows that the lowest score for the two tests are different while the 3rd quartile shows that highest score is same for both the tests. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is a statistical method that could be used to test the relative dispersion among the variables captured by the researcher. As the measurement units are different, the data set may not follow normal distribution.

For this reason, ANOVA method would be useful for testing the relative dispersion among variables. Sample distribution is the statistical distribution of a random variable selected from a sample size in a random manner out of the entire population. It is said to be normally distributed when the mean, median, mode are all equal and the