# Advanced ANOVA/Assessment

This page describes the requirements for the ANOVA assignment, 2008.

## Requirements

The lab report requires students to conduct and present in APA style (at least) one of each of the six types of ANOVA models covered in the tutorials, that is:
* t-test: one-sample, independent, or paired
* One-way ANOVA
* Factorial ANOVA
* Repeated-measures ANOVA
* ANCOVA
* MANOVA

## Data

* You may use any dataset (providing that it allows you to conduct each of these tests).
* You may use your thesis data (or someone else's thesis data with their permission).

## Marking criteria

The sections for the report, the marking criteria, and their weighting will be as follows:
| Section | Notes | Weighting |
| Introduction | Include title and abstract. Identify research question, explain key terms/constructs, and provide major references. State clear hypotheses. | 10% |
| Method | Provide brief participant overview, background to instrumentation, and brief procedure. | 10% |
| Results | Structure results by the types of analyses; for each, consider recoding, descriptives, graph, table, and description of inferential and effect size results. | 60% |
| Discussion | Interpret the results, their strengths and limitations, and implications. | 20% |
APA style will represent approximately 10-20% of the marks within each section.

## Sections

This section contains some further advice (prompted by student requests) about what to include in the major report sections. The intention of this section is not to change in any way the previously stated requirements, but rather to consolidate and clarify verbal and email advice and feedback given during the first six weeks of the unit.
Please demonstrate independent writing and thinking, reference your sources, and so on (i.e., follow standard academic and APA style requirements). Avoid simply replicating or copying thesis work or others' assignment work (because unnecessarily verbose dumping of content with debatable relevance will be unlikely to meet the report requirements). Instead, demonstrate your independent capacity to succintly formulate, conduct, and report on ANOVA analyses using a specific data set. Highest marks are likely to be obtained by the most disciplined, targeted, and judiciously-edited reports, not the longest ones.

### Title and Abstract

A ~10-15 word title and ~150-200 word abstract should provide a clear, succint, and accurate orientation to the content and findings of the report.

### Introduction

The number one purpose of the introduction (for this exercise) is to present logically-derived and clearly articulated hypotheses. This is your chance to demonstrate an independent capacity to do this within the context of ANOVA approaches to inferential data analysis. It should be succint, not a thesis intro, or a reworded thesis intro (that's what theses are for!).
Tip: Begin with independent formulation of hypotheses, then work backwards to make sure you can explain in your own words the rationale for the hypotheses, explain the constructs involved, and why these might be an interesting/important set of questions/theory to test.

### Method

The Method will be evaluated in terms of whether it provides a reader with a clear understanding of the study's sample, instrumentation, procedure, design, etc. but it should also be short, focused, targeted, etc. for this specific exercise, with relevant references, etc. Avoid extraneous information; focus on helping the reader to understand how the data you analyse was obtained. A reader should have enough info from the method to replicate the study, and should not be distracted by irrelevant info.

### Results

Present the results in sub-sections by each hypothesis. However, avoid redundancy, e.g., it may make sense to present a single table of descriptive statistics up front, with each section referring back to this table. For each of the ANOVAs, consider whether it is appropriate to address (all of these for each hypothesis would probably be over the top - but think about which might be appropriate in each case):
* Purpose and design (e.g., IVs and DVs)
* Assumptions
* Descriptives
* Inferential results, including choice of critical $\alpha$
* Graphical results
* Followup/Post-hoc comparisons
* Direction and strength of effect sizes
* Rejection / non-rejection of hypothesis
* Meaning of results (probably belongs mostly in Discussion)

### Discussion

Demonstrate your understanding and conclusions about the hypotheses, given the statistical testing results (i.e., what do the results mean?). What can be said with reasonable confidence? What caveats should be applied? What were the strengths and weaknesses of the design and analyses with respect to testing the hypotheses? How could such studies (using similar designs, instrumentations, and analysis techniques) be improved in the future? Strive for a balanced critique (i.e., drawing on the study's strengths whilst also providing tangible, specific suggestions for improvement).