Discussion
Now that you have your data set for your final study mostly analyzed (it was due on Monday!), you thought the data analysis was over, right? Not so fast. I want you to run one more analysis, and this is going to be a tough one. Rather than a 2 X 2 ANOVA, I want you to run a 2 X 2 X 2 ANOVA. That is, I want you to include participant gender as a third independent variable.
The good news here is that the analysis is almost identical to the 2 X 2 ANOVAs you already did for Paper IV. In SPSS, you will find a new gender variable that is specific to this discussion. We called it “Discussion Six Gender”. This is based on the original gender DV in your study, but it omits participants who selected the “non-binary and “other” genders, leaving us with only male and female participants. With a 2 X 2 X 2 ANOVA, you are going to simply pull “Discussion Six Gender” over as another “fixed factor” in your design and then run the univariate ANOVA.
In your discussion, tell me what (if anything) was significant in the analysis. Think about this as an A X B X C design. There are three different independent variables, all with two levels, so there should be three main effects (one for A, one for B, and one for C). There should be three 2 X 2 interactions (AB, AC, and BC). There should be one possible three-way interaction (ABC). I need you to do three things for me.
First, I need you to tell me is which (if any) main effects are significant, which (if any) two-way interactions are significant), and if the three-way interaction is significant. I don’t need to see the statistics, means, standard deviations, or simple effects tests: just tell me which tests are significant!
Second, try to interpret it for me by looking at the means. For example, you can tell me “It looks like gender did (or did not) have a main effect, with females seeming to have higher ratings than males” or “It looks like gender interacted with the warning, but not with the
Psychological Reactance Theory. Women gave higher ratings when warned, but warning didn’t seem to impact men.” Of course, this might differ for different dependent variables, so look at a few different DVs with your 2 X 2 X 2 ANOVA. Work with your group on this interpretation.
