Results & Discussion - Lab Report Example

Association between Forbearance and Stress Level among Chinese International Results The following figure shows scatter plot for the relationship between perceived scale and forbearance scale.
Figure 1: Relationship between perceived scale and forbearance scale

The scatter plot suggests a weak relationship between forbearance and stress level among Chinese international students. This is because of the unsystematic distribution of the scatter points that the small coefficient (-0.006) confirms. In addition, the small R2 (2*10-5) shows that the linear equation is not suitable for explaining the relationship between stress level and forbearance among the students. Correlation analysis further shows absence of a relationship between the students’ stress levels and forbearance level.
Table 1: Correlation coefficients
 
Forbearance scale
perceived scale
Forbearance scale
1
perceived scale
-0.0044
1
The negative correlation coefficient (-0.0044) shows a weak and inverse relationship. This means that for the students, an increase level of forbearance accompanies decrease in stress level. Regression analysis confirms these results.
Table 2: ANOVA table
ANOVA
 
df
SS
MS
F
Significance F
Regression
1
0.009174
0.009174
0.000503
0.982282
Residual
26
474.4194
18.2469
Total
27
474.4286
 
 
 
The table shows lack of a significant relationship between levels of acculturative stress and frequency of forbearance (p= 0.9822> 0.05, F= 0.0005). In addition, the observed relationship between the variables is negative, as the following table of coefficient shows.
Table 3: Table of coefficient
 
Coefficients
Standard Error
t Stat
P-value
Intercept
30.72696
3.836425
8.009268
1.73E-08
X Variable 1
-0.00612
0.272766
-0.02242
0.982282

Discussion
The study sought to investigate the relationship between level of acculturated stress and forbearance level. A hypothesis that a significant positive relationship exist between the variables was proposed but results identify a negative relationship that is, however, not significant. Many factors could explain the difference in results from previous literature. The sampled students could have coped with their environment, as historical confound explain, to deviate from previously observed relationship between stress level and level of forbearance (Jackson, 2015). Numerous limitations of the study also explain the different results. Limited measures, such as omission of social support that could have been used in previous studies to determine level of forbearance could explain the difference. Measures of forbearance would be different from measures in other studies while measures of stress level would be the same to induce validity threat. In addition, the study used a small sample size and this undermines its external and internal validity. The small sample size could undermine internal validity due to participant bias, whose significance would be high, compared to significance of bias under a large sample size. In addition, a small sample size is less representative of the study’s population and this undermines generalizability. This means that the results could not be accurate for the population and could be invalid, compared to data from existing literature. The applied sampling design, convenience sampling that was limited to Chinese international students from a single university also undermines accuracy of the collected data and results. Internal environmental factors of the university could have moderated relationship between the variables to undermine existing data.
Results from the current study are contrary to existing literature and limitations and confounds could explain this. A future study with a large sample size and a stratified randomized sampling approach is recommended.
Reference
Jackson, S. (2015). Research methods and statistics: A critical thinking approach. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Read More