Professional Documents
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Statistics Package
James Bartlett
1 Introduction
1.1 What is JASP?
JASP is a free, open-source alternative to SPSS that allows you to perform both simple and
complex analyses in a user-friendly package. The aim is to allow you to conduct complex Classical
(stuff with p values) and Bayesian analyses ("What the hell is Bayesian statistics?" you might ask,
look in appendix 9.1 if you are interested), but have the advantage of a drag-and-drop interface
that is intuitive to use.
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Figure 1: JASP startup window
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Figure 2: JASP file tab
2 Today’s session
The session is organised like the process you would normally go through when you perform data
analysis. You want to get a feel for the data through descriptive statistics and using some plots
to visualise the data. The next step is to make sure the type of analysis you want to perform is
appropriate for the data you have, so we will look at data screening. Finally, we will go ahead and
look at the inferential statistics.
The data for all of the examples are from real published research and were made available on
the Open Stats Lab (McIntyre 2016). All the analyses you are going to do are the same as what
was performed in the original research.
3.1.1 Task
1. What would your predictions be? As they are exactly the same words, do you think the
applicants would be rated similarly, or do you think the audio recordings would result in
higher ratings due to additional indicators of intelligence? It is important to think about
this first, so write your prediction down briefly.
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Figure 3: JASP window with data
has correctly labeled each column. The variables we are interested in for the first example are
Condition, Intellect_Rating, Impression_Rating, and Hire_Rating. Condition is our independent
variable and indicates whether the participant has been provided with a transcript (value 0) or an
audio recording (value 1). It should be labeled as nominal data and have the three little circles
explained in section 1.3.3. The other three variables are our dependent variables and each should
be labeled as scale (a little ruler). Intellect_Rating and Impression_Rating are both identified
correctly. However, Hire_Rating may have been labeled as a nominal variable and needs changing
to scale. Click on the three circles and change it to a ruler.
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Figure 4: JASP window for descriptive statistics
independent groups (remember what the independent variable was), so we want there to be little
influence from outliers, we want to assume normality, and that the variances in both groups are
approximately equal.
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3.3.2 Assessing normal distribution and homogeneity of variance
The next thing to do is to check if the data appear to have been sampled from a normal distri-
bution, and whether the variances are approximately equal. This involves clicking on T-Tests >
Independent Samples T-Test to open a new menu below the list of variables and a blank analysis
table on the right of the screen. Note one of the nice features of JASP is that you do not have to
go back through the menus and click a range of options. The new analysis just appears below the
old one (which is now greyed out but still visible if you scroll up).
We can drag all of the dependent variables into the dependent variable box (again, another user-
friendly design in contrast to SPSS where DVs are called DVs) and drag Condition into Grouping
Variable. We now have a range of options to click and the temptation to start looking at T-Tests
is almost irresistible. All we have to do is look at a few more tables and then we are ready to
go. On the menu below the list of variables, click on Normality and Equality of Variances under
the Assumption Checks heading, and also click Descriptives under Additional Statistics to get the
descriptive statistics grouped by condition that we wanted in section 3.2.2. You should now get
something that looks like Figure 6. Another useful design feature (yes, another) in JASP is that
the tables are designed in APA style so that you can easily copy and paste them providing the
variables have appropriate names.
First, we will look at the Shapiro-Wilk test which assesses the assumption of normality. The
idea behind this is that the assumption of normality is the null hypothesis in the test. Therefore, if
you get a p value that is smaller than .05, then the data do not come from a normal distribution and
the assumption of normality is violated. This test and a similar one called the Kolmogorov-Smirov
test can also be found in SPSS. However, although the Shapiro-Wilk test is generally considered
to be better, there are issues with using both and assessing normality visually such as by using
the Q-Q plot (not available in JASP but can be produced in SPSS) is recommended (if you are
interested in learning more, consider reading this). As you selected all three DVs, the Shapiro-
Wilk table reports the test for each one and is divided by condition as we have independent groups.
As we can see in each row, none of the tests are significant so we can assume the assumption of
normality has not been violated.
Secondly, we will look at Levene’s test for the assumption of equal variances (homogeneity
of variance). You should have come across this test previously and uses a similar logic to the
Shapiro-Wilk. The null hypothesis is that the variances are equal between the groups, therefore
a sufficiently large difference in variances between the groups will be classified as significant, as
indicated by the p value of the test. This test is also heavily criticised for reasons similar to the
Shapiro-Wilk test above so any conclusion you make should be in conjunction with a careful look at
the data using plots (scroll up to the boxplots, are the boxes and lines roughly symmetrical around
the median line?). However, the Levene’s test suggests that the assumption of equal variances has
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not been violated and we are fine to continue.
Looking at the Independent Samples T-Test table, we have all the information we want (and in
contrast to SPSS, all the information we need). We have both a Student and Welch T-Test (Welch’s
T-Test should be the default option but see appendix section 9.2 for more information). Remember
what the boxplots and descriptive statistics showed us, participants who were provided with audio
recordings gave higher ratings than those provided with transcripts. We can now support this
using the T-Test result for intellect, impression, and hiring recommendation. Firstly, we will go
through the intellect result, then you can do the others independently. In published articles and
your practical reports, T-Tests should be reported in the standard format of:
t (df ) = t statistic, p value, effect size.
For intellect, we would write the result for the Student T-Test up as t (37) = −3.53, p = .001,
Cohen’s d = −1.13. As we selected the mean difference between the two conditions, this simply
tells us what the difference was between the means for intellect in our two conditions. This shows
that those in the transcript condition rated the applicant 1.99 points on our scale lower on average
than those in the audio recording condition. This makes sense in our example, but if another study
was performed using a different scale, the mean difference between studies would not be able to
be compared. This is where Cohen’s d comes in. It is a standardised effect size that expresses the
difference between two conditions in terms of standard deviations. In our example, those in the
transcript condition rated the applicant 1.13 standard deviations lower on average than those in
the audio recording condition. As this is a standardised unit, we would be able to compare this
to other studies that used a different scale. To interpret this result, we can look at the guidelines
Cohen (1977) originally suggested. He suggested results can be considered as small (±0.2), medium
(±0.5), and large (±0.8) effects. However, it is important that you compare the effects to those
found in the published literature when you perform your own research. These guidelines should
be a last resort. Following these rough guidelines for these examples, there appears to be a large
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effect between the two conditions. Putting this all together, we could conclude something like this:
"Participants in the audio recording condition rated the applicant significantly higher on a rating
of intellect than participants in the audio recording condition, t (37) = −3.53, p = .001, Cohen’s d
= −1.13. This shows that there was a large effect between the two conditions.". This is an example
for the first DV, but there are two remaining. Now it is your turn to think about the results and
complete a few tasks.
3.4.1 Tasks
1. How would you write up the result for the impression rating?
4.1.1 Tasks
1. Identify the design, IV, and DVs in this experiment. You will need to know these for when
you perform the analysis.
2. What would your predictions be? Do you think the infants will look longer at the person
who sung the familiar song, or do you think there will be little difference?
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4.2.1 Tasks
1. Create box plots for each DV and compare them.
2. Assess parametric assumptions. We do not need to worry about homogeneity of variance in
this example as it is a repeated measures design.
3. Analyse the data and write all this up in a short results section. Think about the design
of this study, you will need to click on T-Tests > Paired Samples T-Test this time. Do not
forget effect sizes!
5.1.1 Task
1. What will your prediction be? Do you think greater concern for infectious diseases will be
associated with greater support for conservative or liberal candidates?
5.2.1 Task
1. What is the mean and SD for both variables?
2. Create boxplots for both variables to have an initial look at the data.
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you might have seen that we have 65 rows of data for the Ebola search index, but we only have
24 rows for the voter intention index. This makes sense as the data is split into days and the
voter intention index is based on polling data. We do not have polling data for every day, so the
correlations will be based on the number of data rows we have both a voter intention index and
an Ebola Google search volume. This leaves us with 24 complete pairs of data to base the analysis
on.
Finally, we want there to be no outliers. Outliers are extremely problematic for correlations as
it can bias the r value. We can look back at the boxplots you created during the tasks in section
5.2.1. Can you see any problematic outliers? It appears that the data looks fine, so we are all set
to go ahead and calculate some correlations.
5.4.1 Task
1. Write this example up like you would for a results section in your coursework. Remember to
do it in a logical order, and you can copy and paste the scatter plot if you want (although
do not do this for an assignment as the axis labels are not very formal).
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6 Example Four: Correlation
6.1 Study background
The final study we are going to look at is by Dawtry, Sutton and Sibley (2015). They were interested
in how people differ in their assessment of income inequality. Most people report wanting a fair
society where there is little inequality. However, previous research indicated that wealthy people
perceive society as already wealthy and are less likely to support wealth being redistributed as they
are happy with the current state of affairs. Dawtry et al. (2015) investigated if this was due to
wealthier people having a wealthier social circle. Therefore, in their eye, they estimate the general
population to be wealthier than it is due to everyone around them also being wealthy.
They recruited 305 participants in an online survey to complete a series a questions about: their
own wealth, the wealth of their social circle, inequality in their social circle, the average wealth of
the population, and inequality in the population.
6.2.1 Tasks
1. What is the mean and standard deviation for each of the variables?
7 Summary
This means it is now the end of the workshop! Hopefully you have found it interesting, and you can
now see there are alternatives to SPSS. JASP is a lightweight alternative that helpfully provides
you with information that you just do not get in SPSS. Although it is not perfect (it is still in
development and not even at version 1.0 yet!), there are many advantages that it can offer you as
a psychology student. For example, it provides you with a simple output with just the values you
need, with the option to add more information as and when required. Think back to when you
first came across an SPSS output. You are bombarded with information before you even know
what to do with it. On the other hand, JASP is more intuitive, and is hopefully a little easier to
understand if you are still getting to grips with statistics in psychology. Furthermore, one of the
most important contributions of JASP is the ease in which you can produce effect sizes. Jacob
Cohen (1990: 12), a famous statistician in psychology, said "the primary product of a research
inquiry is one or more measures of effect size, not p values". Despite its popularity, SPSS provides
only a handful of effect sizes and you are required to calculate most of them separately. JASP
allows you to simply tick a box to produce them which saves you time, and reduces the likelihood
of making a mistake if you were to calculate it by hand.
However, despite the drawbacks, SPSS is still useful at times and there are things that JASP
simply cannot do at the moment. Therefore, it is unlikely that you will solely use JASP to analyse
your data. When analysing data myself, I often switch between several statistical packages to
play to each of their strengths. Hopefully you will see that JASP can offer several benefits, and
statistics might appear to be less frightening.
If you have any further questions about any of the topics covered in this session, feel free to
email me on bartle16@uni.coventry.ac.uk.
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8 Additional Resources
• A free online textbook by Craig Wendorf can be downloaded from the Open Science Frame-
work. This has sections on SPSS and JASP, and provides some additional content that was
not covered in this session.
• JASP have their own YouTube channel with a few tutorials on how to perform simple
Bayesian analyses (read appendix 9.1 if you still have no idea what this is). However, if
you search JASP on Youtube, there are a few tutorials on importing data and statistical
designs you may be more familiar with made by users that you might want to look at if you
want some guidance in your own time.
9 Appendix
9.1 Bayesian statistics
There is not really enough room to provide a thorough overview, but to cut a long story short, it is
an entirely different field of statistical inference. Whereas classical (or frequentist) statistics is based
on controlling long-term errors rates through p values, Bayesian statistics allows the probabilities
of different hypotheses to be calculated based on the data available. One of the limitations in using
p values is that all the information it provides is the observed data were unlikely assuming the
null hypothesis was true, nothing more, nothing less. The aim is to control your long-term error
rates, but it provides no information for how likely the null or alternative hypothesis is. However,
a lot of published research and textbooks make out that it does, so it would be useful to be aware
of the concepts of Bayesian Statistics. There are a few good introductory sources to the basics
such as the blog post by Dablander (2015), and an annotated reading list by Etz et al. 2016 can
be downloaded from the Open Science Framework. More and more published research is using
Bayesian statistics, but it is currently not taught on many courses so it would be worthwhile to
read up on it yourself.
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