Please answer the questions directly.

Assignment 9

Critiquing Reported Research

Provide the URL to news article here:

Provide URL to empirical article here:

Your write up does not need to be a formal paper. Just focus on answering each question directly.

You will be expected to justify and explain all of your answers. Please take your time working through these questions, making sure that you’ve completely answered each one and have provided evidence from the articles.

2. Find a current news article that reports an empirical analysis by going to Google News and type in key words you’re interested (related to communication and media). It might be helpful to add the term “research” to the end of your search phrase(s). Make sure that it provides a link to the empirical article, and that you have access to it. Make sure that the empirical article reports at least one linear regression, multiple regression, t-test, ANOVA or MANOVA. If you’re struggling to find an article, you can use one of these news articles and corresponding empirical articles (you might have to follow the link to the empirical article, copy the title and paste the title into the Google Scholar search bar to find the link that you may has access to):  

- https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/12/researchers-explore-how-climate-change-is-framed-on-social-media/

- https://www.insider.com/how-social-media-affects-body-image

- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9002309/Spending-time-phone-isnt-bad-mental-health-scientists-say.html

(7 points)

a)      What is the article about?

b)      Who wrote it? Based on a quick Google (or other) search, do you think they are qualified to interpret the results of the study? Why or why not?

c)      Did they report any descriptive statistics? If they did, how did they report the statistics?

d)     What conclusions did they draw?

e)      Which statistics (if any) did they use to support these conclusions? If they did not include statistics in their conclusions, explain why it might be a good idea to include them.

f)       Did they address limitations to the study? Why do you think they did/did not address them?

g)      Did they address any possible sampling error?

3. Navigate to the corresponding empirical article. Choose one analysis of one hypothesis to focus on, though you may need to find important statistics throughout the paper (e.g., demographics in the method section, assumptions checked earlier in the results section).  (14 points)

a)      What is their sampling frame and what or who made up their sample?

b)      What was the hypothesis or formal research question that generated this particular analysis (by analysis, I mean this one particular test, not the study at large)? If they don’t list one, use your critical thinking skills to figure it out (look at what IV(s) and DV are tested here).

c)      Based on this hypothesis, what were the important variables identified (list the IV and DV)?

d)     How were the IV(s) and DV conceptualized?

e)      How were the IV(s) and DV operationalized?

f)       Do you agree with these operationalizations? Do you have any concerns about them? Why or why not?

g)      What descriptive statistics did they report? How did the researchers report them?

h)      What statistical test did they run? Report the test statistic, effect size, p-value, and sample size.

i)        Did they interpret the significance correctly?                           

j)        Do you agree with the statistical test they chose? Why or why not?

k)      What are the assumptions of the test they chose?

l)        Did the author(s) of this empirical article address these assumptions of the test? If they did, how did they address the assumptions? If they didn’t, why is it important to address them?

m)    What conclusion(s) did the author(s) of the empirical article draw from this particular analysis? Looking at the methodology, statistical analysis, sample, and other empirical logic, can they actually make this conclusion? (2 points)

(You may have to look in the discussion section for this answer. Please focus on this one statistical analysis of this one hypothesis, not conclusions drawn by the study at large)

4. Reflect on the conclusions. (4 points)

a)      Based on your analysis above, do you agree or disagree with the conclusions drawn by the author of the news article? Explain why or why not using empirical reasoning, methodology, and/or statistics? (2 points)

b)      Did the author of the news article report an accurate summary of the research conducted? Why or why not?

c)      Did the author of the news article accurately convey limitations of empirical research in general (e.g., cautioning the audience that this is just one study and/or that more research is needed)?