THREE CORRELATIONS

The purpose of this laboratory is to provide you and a partner with experience dealing with data from a correlational study.  I want you to conduct THREE CORRELATIONS.  Each of the general variables (humour style, stress and optimism) must appear in at least one correlation. The best approach will likely be to select a variable (e.g., optimism) and see how the other factors correlate with this variable (e.g., Affiliative humour, stress).  However, DO NOT correlate the different humour styles with each other (e.g., correlation between affiliative humour and aggressive humour). The choice of correlations you select should be the ones that fit best with your interest and the literature you obtained to fit with that interest.  The data file in which these variables can be found is called correlationdata.csv.

• Based on a review of the literature, form hypotheses related to this topic. You should perform the appropriate correlations to test your hypotheses.

• Once you have analysed your data, you must write a full APA-style paper. Your write-up should include the following:
  1. Title Page
  2. Abstract
  3. Introduction
  4. Method
  5. Results
  6. Discussion
  7. References
  8. Appendices

• Your Introduction should be based on at least three articles related to the topic. These articles will serve as the background information for your introduction. Remember to summarize and integrate the main findings of these references in your Introduction. Also remember to give a brief description of the study that was conducted and end your Introductionwith your experimental hypotheses regarding the relationship between your variables of interest. Your general operational definition should be here too.

• Your Method section should include all relevant subsections. Give information about the participants in the study (e.g., age, gender breakdown, etc.) and discuss the measures and the materials used.Write the paper as though the consent form, debriefing form, and relevant questionnaires were included as appendices, however, you do not need to actually attach them.  Make sure that you describe the procedure that was undertaken when collecting the data and the general analytic strategy for your analyses, including any adjustments made to the alpha level used.

• You will also have full Results and Discussion sections. Make sure that you present your results in proper APA format.  Also remember the different elements required in the Discussion section, including the discussion of whether or not your experimental hypotheses were supported and the implications of your findings.

• Make sure to include an APA style References page. Be sure to only include the references that appeared in the body of your paper. You must also include the references for the three measures used in data collection.  The DOIs were provided to you – you must now cite these references properly on the References page.

• Include statistical output from R in an Appendix unless it is something that you are using as a figure. Anything used as a figure, such as a scatterplot, should be done according to proper APA format for figures.