There are four forms of assessment for PSYU3349: weekly quizzes, which involve data analysis via Stata and will be submitted online through iLearn; a mid-session test which will be held in computer labs and will involve data analysis in Stata; a major practical project, which will involve data analysis and communication of findings in response to a research question; and the final examination. Overall grades for the unit will be determined by adding together marks for the weekly quizzes, the mid-session test, the practical project and the final examination. See the university policy on grading for more information.

Late Penalties

Late submission of the practical report will attract a penalty of 5% of the maximum mark for every day it is late. In other words, the assignment is worth 40%, so a penalty of 5% x 40 = 2.0 will be applied. Two (2) marks are subtracted from whatever the student received for the report for each day late. No work can be accepted after marked project reports are handed back to students. Requests for extensions for assignments are granted by the Faculty Student Centre. Neither the weekly quizzes nor the mid-session test can be submitted late although alternate assessments may be substituted if the student is granted special consideration via the ASK system.

Examination Policy

You are expected to present yourself for examination at the time and place designated in the University Examination Timetable. The timetable will be available in Draft form approximately eight weeks before the commencement of the examinations and in Final form approximately four weeks before the commencement of the examinations and will be available from this website:

http://students.mq.edu.au/student_admin/exams

The only exception to not sitting an examination at the designated time is because of documented illness or unavoidable disruption. In these circumstances you may wish to consider applying for Special Consideration, through https://ask.mq.edu.au. If a Supplementary Examination is granted as a result of the Special Consideration process, the examination will be scheduled after the conclusion of the official examination period. The format of a supplementary examination is at each unit convener’s discretion and is subject to change from the original final examination. Supplementary Exams are only offered to students who have satisfactorily completed all other assessments for the unit and were unable to sit the final exam because of documented illness or unavoidable disruption.

All applications for supplementary exams should be submitted as a Special Consideration request, through https://ask.mq.edu.au. It is the student’s responsibility to follow the steps outlined in this website and to submit supporting documentations with the request. This must be done within five (5) working days after the exam or test date. An email will be sent to the student advising them of the outcome of their request for a supplementary exam. If a supplementary exam has been granted, it is the student’s responsibility to check the date and location of the supplementary exam although they are generally in mid-July. Students who are granted to sit for a supplementary exam must make themselves available to sit for the supplementary exam on the specified date. There will only be one time. It is the student’s responsibility to email Student Centre to confirm attendance at the supplementary exam. You are advised that it is Macquarie University policy not to set early examinations for individuals or groups of students. All students are expected to ensure that they are available until the end of the teaching semester, which is the final day of the official examination period

Weekly online quizzes

Tutorial quizzes will be worth 1% each to a maximum overall value of 10% across the session. Only the best 10 quizzes from each student will contribute to the final score out of 10. The two quizzes with the lowest scores across the session will be discounted from each student's mark.

The unit’s tutorial program is vital for students to have a first-hand understanding of the material and its application in psychology research. Each week (starting week 1) there will be a set of practical tasks to complete. Most weeks this will involve a simple, practical data analysis (involving Stata) and interpretation task, although some weeks students may be given Stata output to interpret and asked to answer some questions using the output. The requirement to complete a small on-line quiz each week will help ensure that students keep up with the unit material week-by-week. Tutors will then work through the solution during tutorial sessions in the subsequent week. Solutions to quizzes will not be made available outside of tutorial classes. The final task in Week 13 will be graded but will not be reviewed in tutorials. The answers will be posted on iLearn rather than discussed in a tutorial. Quizzes must be completed within iLearn by 5pm on the Friday before the week in which it will be discussed. The one exception to this rule is the quiz for Week 1 which must be submitted via iLearn by 5pm on Sunday 1st March. The iLearn system will not accept submissions after that time and a mark of zero for that week will be recorded if no quiz is submitted on-time without a valid medical certificate or other documented unforseen circumstances. Each quiz is completed via iLearn and you will receive your mark once the quiz closes. The tasks must be completed individually by each student. If there are technical problems associated with iLearn (e.g., error message and then being unable to complete the quiz), make sure you take a screen shot of any error messages that occur. If a screen shot of an error occurring within iLearn is sent to both Mike Jones and Naomi Sweller (in a single email) before the quiz deadline, and it is deemed to be an error occurring that was out of the student’s control, then a second attempt at the quiz will be granted, as long as the quiz attempt was commenced at least 2 hours before the quiz deadline and must be completed before the first tutorial session that reviews that quiz. No second attempts will be granted under any circumstances without evidence of the glitch. Similarly, no second attempts will be granted if you begin your attempt too late and cannot complete the quiz before 5pm Friday. It is strongly recommended you complete your quiz well in advance of the 5pm deadline! In the event of health or other issues that may prevent you from completing the quiz by the 5pm deadline, you may apply for Special Consideration to be exempted from 1 quiz only. If further issues are experienced no further exemptions will be granted and an alternate assessment task will be set for you by Mike Jones and Naomi Sweller to replace the missed quiz.

Midsession test

PSYU3349 is a unit emphasising practical data analysis for psychologists and hence an assessment on practical data analysis is crucial. This is a one-hour e-test conducted on campus, which will cover the content from Weeks 1 – 4 of the unit. The test will involve “live” analysis of datasets in Stata, and students will be required to answer questions through the test portal relating to their analyses. Questions will be a combination of fill in the blank-style questions and multiple choice questions. The test will be conducted entirely through iLearn. No internet access is allowed during this exam and any attempt to do so will be considered cheating. Separate laptops / tablets / mobile phones will not be permitted in the exam room. The test is closed book and no external written or electronic materials will be permitted. Students are required to enrol in one of the exam slots on eStudent in the same manner as you enrol in tutorials. Students will only be permitted to sit the test in the slot in which they are enrolled and must bring their student ID to the exam room for verification. If you do not enrol in one of the slots or you do not bring your student ID you will not be eligible to sit the test. Similarly, if you miss your timeslot you will not be permitted to sit the test in the subsequent slot.

Practical project

In the practical project, students are asked to address a practical research question and must operationalise it and determine an appropriate course of analysis with only general directions. Stata commands needed to complete the practical project will not be provided for you. You will be expected to have learnt the required Stata commands through understanding the demonstration programs used in lectures and quizzes and through your own practice with Stata. Details of the practical project including the question and the dataset will be made available via iLearn.

Please also note that iLearn can lag when large numbers of students are in the system at the same time. Submission time for assignments will be counted as the time the assessment was received. Because of this, make sure you don't leave your submission to 4:55pm the day it is due! Late penalties will be applied to assignments that are received after the due time.

Please note that this unit has been altered to accommodate our delivery provisions in compliance with current COVID-19 requirements (Special Circumstance delivery). Learning activities (such as tutorials and other small group learning activities) will be offered on-campus while keeping an online version available for those students who choose to continue their studies online (selected via eStudent). Learning activities for this unit will be delivered as follows:

Lectures

There are three hours of lectures per week. These lectures will be pre-recorded and uploaded to iLearn. In addition, there will be a one-hour Question and Answer session run via Zoom. These sessions will cover the previous week's lecture content with the exception of Week 1, which will cover administrative matters.

Tutorials

There is a one hour tutorial each week starting in Week 2. There are both on-campus and on-line tutorials available, please make sure you enrol in whichever version you intend to attend.

Managing Classes: Official changes to all units can be done on-line via eStudent, including tutorials. Students will be allowed to informally move between tutorial classes, provided: 1) for on-campus classes there are spare seats after all students enrolled in that class have taken their seats and 2) for on-line classes students understand that those enrolled in the class will have priority when asking questions during class. Please email the tutor of the class you wish to attend for a particular week to check.

Textbook

Agresti, A. (2018). Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences (5thed.). Boston, USA: Pearson.

Additional reading for Repeated Measures and Mixed Designs lecture:

Howell, D.C. (2012). Statistical methods for psychology (8th ed.). Belmont, California: Duxbury Press. [Note: the relevant sections are available in Leganto]

Additional readings for Week 5 lecture [available in Leganto]:

Fox, J. (2008) Bootstrapping regression models. In Applied regression analysis and generalized linear models (2nd ed.) (pp. 587-606). Los Angeles: Sage.

Singh, K., & Xie, M. (2008). Bootstrap: A statistical method. Unpublished manuscript, Rutgers University, USA. Retrieved from http://www.stat.rutgers.edu/home/mxie/RCPapers/bootstrap.pdf.

Additional general reading

The text below is a useful reference. Students are not required to have or read this text but may find it useful if they are wanting additional material beyond the textbook. The Weinberg and Abramowitz text is the required text for PSY248/PSYU2248 and is particularly useful for revision of Stata which is an essential practical skill for PSYU3349.

Weinberg, S. L. & Abramowitz, S. K. (2016). Statistics using Stata: An Integrative Approach (1st ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Computing

You are expected to have had prior experience in the use of Stata before coming into PSYU3349, and be able to read raw data files, access pre-existing data files and retrieve Stata data files. You are also expected to have some knowledge of syntax in Stata. There are several ways of accessing Stata throughout this course, including purchasing the software yourself, using computers on campus or logging in to AppStream. These options will be discussed in more detail during the first week of lectures.

There are three hours of lectures each week. The lectures are considered essential to understanding the unit material so you must access the recordings online. The lecture content will begin by building on PSY248/PSYU2248 statistical modelling, with special reference to the General Linear Model (GLM). The GLM includes regression models (simple and multiple), the t-test, oneway ANOVA models, factorial ANOVA models (balanced and unbalanced), ANCOVA models and models involving statistical control with mixed measurement independent variables. For these models we will only concern ourselves with models which have one, numeric dependent variable. Following this, we will cover approaches to analysis of non-Normal dependent variables including bootstrapping and Logistic Regression (categorical DV). As our models become more complex (i.e., have increasing numbers of independent variables), we will discuss the process of model reduction. The unit finishes with an extension of ANOVA content into repeated measures and mixed within/between subject designs. There is a one hour tutorial each week starting in Week 2. Attendance at tutorials is not compulsory, but is strongly recommended as it is the only place answers to the weekly quizzes are discussed. Quiz answers will not be available outside of tutorials.