*Application: Descriptive statistics

Procedure:

Provide a brief description of the procedure for generating descriptive statistics results as outlined below. The purpose of this section is to a) verify that you have selected the appropriate procedure, b) verify that you have completed and interpreted the procedure correctly, and c) document these procedures in your own way for future use on other projects.Your procedure description should include

• the R command and statistical procedure used (use MPA Statistics/descriptive statistics/summarize dataset) (you can also use statistics/summaries/active dataset for a different format that includes median information)
• the raw output presented by R.

Please complete descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, and proportion, as appropriate, for each of FOUR variables.

Note: You should strongly consider giving priority to the dependent variable(s) you plan to analyze as part of this project and/or any key independent variables of particular interest to the project. It works best if each student has his/her own dependent variable and/or relationship(s) to analyze.

Writeup:

Write the results of your analysis in paragraph form. The writeup should achieve the following:

• Identify the research question(s) addressed or purposes fulfilled by the descriptive analysis presented here.
• Provide a brief description of the variable(s) discussed and how they were measured.
• Identify the substantive findings (what is the answer to the question stated above?)
• Identify the statistic(s) used and, if appropriate, a justification for the statistic(s) used (justification should be extremely brief; usually a few words within a sentence)
• Provide the technical results, providing the numbers and statistics necessary to justify the substantive findings presented
• Identify conclusions or implications of the results relative to the research question(s) addressed by the analysis.

Example writeup for one variable (you should have several):

We are interested in the overall level of mental health of Provo City youth. The results of our survey suggest that on a scale of 1-10, the mean score of Provo teenagers (aged 12-18) is 6.8 (between "good" and "very good."). The median and mode score on this measure is 6 ("good"). Only 30 percent of youth identified their mental health as "neutral" or worse. Based on our sample, we expect the actual population score to range between 5.7 and 7.2 (95 percent confidence interval). These results suggest that while most youth in Provo consider their mental health to be better than neutral, most do not appear to consider themselves in excellent mental health, and roughly one-third of youth self-identify some level of mental health concern. This suggests significant room for improvement in the identification and treatment of mental health issues among youth in Provo.