Question

A clinical psychologist wanted to investigate the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapy over time. Fifteen people who checked into a treatment facility (and consented to participate) were enrolled in the study. Each of the participants received psychoanalytic therapy for a period of eight weeks. To measure the effectiveness of the therapy, the participants were administered a general measure of well-being before beginning therapy, four weeks into treatment, and after eight weeks. The well-being measure ranged from 10 to 50, with higher scores indicating greater well-being. The data are in the file Exercise6-1.sav available on BEACHBOARD (the variables are named beforetherapy, fourweeks, and eightweeks). Open the data file in SPSS and perform the appropriate analyses to answer the questions below.

State the null and alternative hypotheses. State a research question for the data. Is there a significant difference in the well-being scores over time? Test at α=0.05. What is the effect size for the ANOVA? If the overall ANOVA is significant, perform follow-up tests as appropriate. Adjust alpha for each test so that the set of tests does not exceed .05. Write the results of the study using APA format as appropriate.

Answer 1

To determine if there is a significant difference in well-being scores over time with psychoanalytic therapy, an ANOVA test can be used. The research question is whether there is a significant change in well-being scores over time. The results should be reported in APA format.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine if there is a significant difference in well-being scores over time, an ANOVA test can be performed on the data.

The null hypothesis (H0) would state that there is no difference in well-being scores at different time points, while the alternative hypothesis (H1) would state that there is a significant difference.

The research question for this study would be: Is there a significant change in well-being scores over time among individuals receiving psychoanalytic therapy?

To calculate the effect size for the ANOVA, one can use eta squared (η²), which represents the proportion of variance in the dependent variable accounted for by the independent variable.

Follow-up tests, such as post hoc tests or pairwise comparisons, can be performed if the overall ANOVA is significant. Alpha (α) should be adjusted for each test, so that the cumulative alpha does not exceed 0.05.

In APA format, the results of the study can be reported as follows: 'An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapy in improving well-being scores over time.

A significant difference in well-being scores was found, F(df) = (value), p < 0.05.

Post hoc tests revealed (specific findings).'