SPSS exercise 4.4

Every year, Santon Bridge in England is the scene of the 'World's Biggest Liar Competition'. You want to investigate whether creative people do better in the competition than those who are less creative. In other words, you want to test the following hypothesis: 'The more creative someone is, the better they are at making up stories'. You ask 68 candidates who took part in the competition in the past decade to complete a questionnaire measuring their creativity (index score with a maximum of 60), and ask them where they finished in the competition (maximum fifth). (Example after Field, 2009). Database: Liar.sav.

a. What is the level of measurement of the 'creativity' variable?

it is a composite variable (see introduction); therefore the level of measurement is interval.

b. What is the level of measurement of the 'position' variable?

ordinal

c. Check the data for errors. In one of the variables, there is a value that must be made missing. Set it as missing using Define Variable Properties. Compare your syntax to the syntax below.

* Define Variable Properties.
* Position.
MISSING VALUES Position(6).
EXECUTE.

Note: the maximum score for position is '5'; therefore '6' should be set as missing.

d. What is the most suitable measure of association for answering the hypothesis and why?

Spearman's correlation coefficient, because the position variable is ranked

e. Calculate the most suitable measure of association and paste the syntax into the answer field.

NONPAR CORR
  /VARIABLES=Creativity Position
  /PRINT=SPEARMAN TWOTAIL NOSIG
  /MISSING=PAIRWISE.

f. Draw a conclusion according to the guidelines. Name the variables 'creativity' and 'position'.

The higher someone scores on creativity, the higher they score on position in the best liar competition: rs = - 0.52, p < .001. This association is significant.

Note: Always round to two decimal places in your interpretations.

g. Is the hypothesis correct?

Since position is coded in such a way that the lower you score, the higher you are on the ranking list, the hypothesis is correct.