Answer To: MGMT 650 Critical Review Assignment The article for the critical review assignment is: Williams, A...
Rajeswari answered on Aug 28 2021
63985 Assignment
Part I:
Elements of the critique
Summary of the article:
Topic:
Statistical anxiety
Though it was observed that normally most students avoid statistical classes and they are ready to attend only during the last semesters because there was no other go, the causes were not found out in a scientific way before. The reason for this avoidance of statistics classes was the concern of many researchers and to some extent they found out that the worry and anxiety about the subject were the main causes. But further exploring about these in depth with descriptive statistics was not performed before and no researcher came out with suggestions to decrease anxiety in the minds of students about the subject in a positive and concrete way.
In this article, the author meticulously studied that the main reason is the statistics anxiety which was caused by worry and worry was caused by other several forms of anxiety. The researcher analyzed each factor of worry and concluded the one ( intolerance of uncertainty) accounts more for the statistical anxiety while other factors do not contribute significantly. Other factors can be reduced by motivation, familiarity to the subject by tests, etc.
Research methodology:
For carrying out his research, the author has selected 97 students from the college of education in a large public southwestern university. These 97 students consisted of both males and females, also from different races and different time remaining to complete the course.
The data collected was sorted into gender on one hand, racewise on another and also Master level or Doctorate level was done.
From these 97 students selected intolerance of uncertainty, and other 7 factors were assessed with a scale of 12 items ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. It was done as paired by pre test and post test. Same students perceptions were recorded pre and post and comparison was made whether there was any difference in the levels.
Descriptive statistics was done for eight types of worries as in table 2 with mean and std deviations for pre and post test side by side. To find out intercorrelation between these eight types Pearson correlation coefficient was found out and those with significant figures (not near to 0) were presented in table 3.
Major conclusions:
Anova and Manova were done for this data to find out the differences. F statistics and p value are given in table 4.
The p value was larger than 0.05 only for Intolerence of Uncertainty before and after test. This reveals because of test this average does not change significantly. Hence IUS is the major cause of anxiety which also causes worries. This has a significant role in the statistical anxiety.
Part II
In-depth critique of the article
In this we analyse in depth about the article and give our findings.
i) Purpose: In this article, the research problem is very clearly stated. In the introduction itself, the author briefs about the purpose of the article, to explore deeply the statistical anxiety as the effect of worries which in turn is caused by eight elements as listed in the table. The introduction itself makes even a layman to understand the purpose of research and final intention of the researcher by doing this research.
ii) Literature review:
· Is the review logically organized?
The review mainly focuses first the topic statistical anxiety caused by worry and worry caused by eight subdivisions. Thus logically the main topic with causes as subdivisions were arranged in a correct manner. The eight factors are also stated which can be easily understood by any man who experienced anxiety atleast once in a lifetime. The measurements with scale 12 from strongly disagree to strongly agree almost comprises each mental state or position of the student surveyed.
· Does it offer a balanced critical analysis of the literature?
Many aspects of worries such as intolerance of uncertainty, worry, worth of statistics, interpretation anxiety, test and class anxiety, computational self concept, Fear of asking for help, fear of asking teacher are explained in simple language with examples. The explanations are sufficient for the reader to understand and also neither too long nor too short. They precisely explain what is meant by that term without very long and detailed explanations. Thus a balanced critical analysis of the literature is offered in this article.
· Is the majority of the literature of recent origin?
In 4.1 of the article under Methods, it is mentioned that students from from the college of education of a large public southwestern university were selected and used as voluntary participants in the year 2010. As more than 10 years have lapsed, there might have been changes in the education curriculum, students’ psychology, method of teaching statistics, etc. Hence this literature cannot be taken as of recent origin, but within admissible levels of time limits for research.
· Is it empirical in nature?
In the article it is clearly stated that methodology is used by directly finding the measurements of anxiety from the participants. In other words, the survey was done direct and not depending on any other primary data or by own belief. This was directly done and collected so that it is purely empirical in nature.
· Objectives/hypotheses
· Has a research question or hypothesis been identified?
Though the article does not state explicitly the hypothesis null or alternate we can understand the hypothesis from the table of results the test done and p values. The data collected was pre and post test for eight factors of anxiety, and the hypothesis for each factor was
H0: Mean of anxiety pretest = Mean of anxiety post test
Ha: Mean of anxiety pre test > Mean of...