SRM 610 Fall 2017: Project
Submit Online
on or before Thu Dec 7 in class
Note
The final project is a written report. You must complete the project. Read the
Evaluation Criteria.
You are encouraged to collaborate–only two students per project. Also it is highly
recommended that you show me your analysis and draft report prior to final submission. I will not give detailed feedback but I will go over it and point to areas where
you can improve.
Submission
1. The report must look professional. It should contain an abstract, sections with
appropriate titles including a conclusion/discussion section, and bibliography.
2. The report should be 7-12 pages long excluding SAS/SPSS/R codes. Please
paste your codes as an appendix as concisely as possible.
3. Use Word or any word-processor to typeset your answer. Use 12 point Roman
font, 1.5 spaced. Print on one side of the paper.
4. Do not dump SAS/SPSS/R output. You must create Tables by yourself. Computer outputs “as-is” are not acceptable.
5. Always use captions and numbers to identify each graph and table. And they
should be referred to in the text. Remember, a figure or table should ideally
be self explanatory. That means, if you take the figure out of the context, it
should still be meaningful.
6. This must be your own work. Any material used from anywhere must be cited.
I will use Canvas’s tool for detecting plagiarism using SafeAssign. SafeAssign
checks online resources as well as your friend’s work for plagiarism.
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Problems
Holzinger and Swineford (1939) collected data from 301 seventh- and eighth-grade
children on a total of 26 different psychological tests. A CSV data set HolzingerSwineford.csv
has been uploaded. Variables and their descriptions are given in Table 1.
Answer the following questions.
Q.1 Analyze the data using an appropriate data reduction technique to identify important underlying factors that are attributable to the observed variation in the
data.
Q.2 In particular, you should address the following when you analyze the data
i) Show a data summary. You can be really creative here. I will give bonus
credit if you can summarize the data suitable for layperson. You can use
tables, graphs or a combination thereof as appropriate.
ii) Justify your use of the data reduction technique.
iii) Justify the variables you consider in your study
iv) Check for outliers in the data and comment on how you would address the
issue. If you have found outliers in the data, discuss if analysis excluding
outliers results in a different conclusion than without excluding them from
analysis. That means, you would carry out the analysis with and without the outliers but present results only that you deem appropriate. A
remark/comment on the effect of outliers (if any) would suffice.
v) Justify your choice of the number of factors, and interpret them.
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Table 1: Variables and their descriptions.
Variable Description
id subject’s ID number
Gender subject’s gender
grade the grade the subject is on
agey the year part of the subject’s age
agem the month part of the subject’s age
school the school the subject is from
visual scores on visual perception test, test 1
cubes scores on cubes test, test 2
paper scores on paper form board test, test 3
flags scores on lozenges test, test 4
general scores on general information test, test 5
paragrap scores on paragraph comprehension test, test 6
sentence scores on sentence completion test, test 7
wordc scores on word classification test, test 8
wordm scores on word meaning test, test 9
addition scores on add test, test 10
code scores on code test, test 11
counting scores on counting groups of dots test, test 12
straight scores on straight and curved capitals test, test 13
wordr scores on word recognition test, test 14
numberr scores on number recognition test, test 15
figurer scores on figure recognition test, test 16
object scores on object-number test, test 17
numberf scores on number-figure test, test 18
figurew scores on figure-word test, test 19
deduct scores on deduction test, test 20
numeric scores on numerical puzzles test, test 21
problemr scores on problem reasoning test, test 22
series scores on series completion test, test 23
arithmet scores on Woody-McCall mixed fundamentals, form I test, test 24
paperrev scores on additional paper form board test, test 25
flagssub scores on flags test, test 26
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Evaluation Criteria
• A professional looking report which adequately addresses all the problems may
receive an A. To receive an A, the report has to be outstanding in terms of
analyses and writing.
• A professional looking report with misspelled words, or anything less than outstanding may receive an A-
• Incomplete work may receive a grade in B-class.
• If you do not complete the final project, your final course grade will be at best
B+ regardless of your grades on homeworks and article critiques.
References
• Holzinger, K., & Swineford, F. (1939). A study in factor analysis: The stability
of a bifactor solution. Supplementary Educational Monograph, no. 48. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
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