Hypothesis
1. Null hypothesis: There is no relationship between the participant’s level of political views and their level of support for life without parole.
2. Alternate hypothesis: there is a relationship between participant’s political views and their level of support for life without parole
Method
Participants
The participants included 189 university students. The participant’s age varied between 22 years to 35 years, and composed of married, single and separated or divorced. Moreover, the participants were selected from black, white, Hispanic or Asian origin. They were asked to rate their political views on a Likert scale 1 to 5 (very liberal-very conservative). Also, they were asked to rate their support for life without parole in general on a scale 1 to 5 (oppose in all cases-support in all cases). The participants were as described in the tables below.
Materials
The study included a randomly assigned survey. This consisted of two assessments, this include rating political views in a Likert scale 1 to 5, and rating support for life without parole in general on a Likert scale 1 to 5. A power of 0.8 is adequate to get the desired results. At a significance level of 0.01, and the study desired to achieve a power of 0.80, the sample size should be composed of 150 participants (Murphy & Myors, 2004).
Design
The study was cross-sectional study aimed at establishing whether there is a relationship between people’s political views and their level of support for life without parole. The variables in the study (political view and support for life without parole) are under the scale level. The correlation coefficient between their level of political views and level of support for life without parole was tested. Also, the covariance for variables was tested. These tests were conducted because they would give the sign and size of the correlation between the variable. In addition, the two tests provided a measure of comparison for the relationship (Johnson, & Christensen, 2010).
Procedure
Information on ratings given to political views and support for life without parole by a group of university students was collected in a survey. The opinions in form of ratings were recorded in order to estimate whether they are related. The survey was administered on the 189 participants. Individuals rated their political views on scale 1 to 5 (very liberal to very conservative). Also, they rated their support for life without parole on a Likert scale 1 to 5 (oppose all to support all). The data obtained was analyzed for correlations to establish the relationship between the two.
Results
98.9% of the participants replied to the survey questions. The participant’s rating on political views had a mean of 0.86 (SD = 0.798), while support for life without parole had a mean of 3.64 (SD = 0.771). The Pearson correlation coefficient r = .215, p = 0.002, while the covariance was .133.
Discussions
There is a weak relationship between the participants political views and their levels of support to life without parole, r = .215, P (one tailed) < .01. The results are statistically significant with P<0.01 for a single tailed test (Howell, 2009). In addition, r2 = .046, meaning that political views accounts for 4.6% variability in the support for life without parole (O'Rourke, Hatcher, & Stepanski, 2005). Moreover, the covariance value of .133 indicates that the magnitude of the relationship is too low. Therefore, it can be concluded the relation between people’s political views and their level of support to life without parole is a weak relationship.
References
Howell, D. C. (2009). Statistical Methods for psychology.USA. Cengage Learning.
Johnson, B., & Christensen, L. B. (2010). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and
Mixed Approaches. London: Sage Publication.
Murphy, K.R., & Myors, B. (2004). Statistical power analysis: A simple and general modern
hypothesis test. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
O’Rourke, N., hatcher, L., & Stepanski, E. (2005). A Step by step approach to using SA for
univariate & multivariate statistics. USA: SAS Publishing.
