Dissertation Advice
Why Should I Perform Pearson’s Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression Analysis?
Saturday, February 26th, 2011Suppose you want to find out if there is a correlation between job satisfaction and the perception of the supervisor’s leadership style among non-supervisory employees. Suppose you use the Multifactor Leadership Style Questionnaire (MLQ) to measure five transformational leadership styles (the MLQ measures other leadership styles too but we don’t need them for this explanation). […]
Should I use One-tailed or Two-tailed Hypothesis Tests?
Saturday, February 26th, 2011One-sided alternative hypotheses are rarely used and I usually discourage their use. The point is, why limit yourself to a one-sided alternative hypothesis? If the results should happen to be statistically significant, but in the opposite direction you expected, you will not be able to reject the null hypothesis.
It is my understanding there are mainly […]
What is the smallest sample size I can use for my study?
Saturday, February 26th, 2011This is actually a tougher question than you might think. The text book way to determine a sample size is to conduct a literature review to determine what effect size you are looking for. For example, suppose you wanted to know if there is a correlation between […]
How to Write A Dissertation Proposal – A Statistician’s Viewpoint
Saturday, January 22nd, 20111) It starts with personal interest in a “general topic” within your area of specialization. Most likely this topic is something you are familiar with from personal or professional experience.
2) Conduct some preliminary literature review to insure the general topic you have in mind has not already been thoroughly researched and published (i.e. don’t reinvent […]
Recruiting Study Participants
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010Recruiting participants for a research study can be challenging. I often advise my clients to consider inviting members of a professional association to participate in their survey research. There are many advantages to this approach:
1. Very little red-tape. You are not targeting one or more companies individually, so you don’t have to get permission from […]