Peer Review

Weapons and Aggression

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Jan 6, 2018 by Psychology

Bookmark

Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This tutorial addresses the weapon effect. A component of the RICE VIRTUAL LAB in STATISTICS (a 2007 MERLOT CLASSIC), it provides data supporting that the presence of a weapon increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts. Using these data, the tutorial also covers the following statistical concepts: quantile and box plots, stem and leaf displays, one-sample t test, confidence interval, within-subjects ANOVA, and consequences of violation of normality assumption.
Type of Material:: Tutorial
Recommended Uses:: This site has value for in-class presentation of research or statistics; the information presentation is brief enough to be explored in a live setting. Additionally, the site provides sufficient detail that it would be useful for individual or team exploration as homework.
Technical Requirements:: No special equipment, software or hardware is required to view the site. The site provides instructions on how to conduct statistical analysis in SPSS, SAS, or JMP. Students would need access to relevant statistical software to conduct the analyses as discussed.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: The site provides a case study of a single research study. Students can use this site to: 1) learn about the weapons effect (tendency for increased aggression when weapons are present) 2) understand research design to study psychological phenomena 3) apply knowledge of statistics to analyze research data.
Target Student Population:: The material is most relevant for undergraduate students who have taken or are in a beginning statistics course; the content is relevant for social psychology, research methods or statistics.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: To fully understand the case study, students would need some background in statistics. However, the case study provides an interesting exploration of weapons effect (social psychology) or research design that could be examined without going into the statistics of the analysis.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: • This site walks the user through an experiment on weapon focus. Students will complete the activity with an understanding of weapon focus and a number of statistical methods. • The information is clear and concise. Particularly valuable is that the case study includes the raw data along with an explanation of how to analyze it using various statistical packages. In addition, it provides the output of the data analysis using the different statistical programs so that students could compare their output with an existing analysis.
Concerns:: • The site itself does not provide any instructions. It provides the basic structure and data from which an instructor could build instruction or activities. The case study does not have sufficient detail to serve as a stand-alone activity, but does include necessary information for instructors to integrate into lecture, homework or group activities.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: • This is a good resource for exploring research design and statistics in relation to a single psychological phenomenon. While the information is very brief, it provides enough background to make it meaningful. The inclusion of raw data and directions for statistics provides a good hands-on opportunity for students to practice data analysis. • The information on the site is valuable to understand the statistical concepts. The addition of multiple choice questions throughout allow the students to test themselves.
Concerns:: • Some instructions for the programs are dated, but the user should still be able to work through them. • This learning object is not designed to be used without some guidance from the instructor. While the information on how to conduct the statistical analysis is complete, there is little information on why this is the best analysis or to how to examine other possible ways of analyzing the data.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: • The information is clear, concise, and beneficial. It is presented in an easy-to-follow format that calls for users to click through the side menu to move from section to section.
Concerns:: • The site is very basic (digital text). While the reviewers appreciated the concise presentation of information, at times it might be beneficial to add a few more sentences to fully explore the relevant concepts. Integrating multimedia, interactive statistics decision-trees or downloadable data files also would add to the usability of the site.

Other Issues and Comments:: The nature of this information does not require updating (concepts, statistics and directions will not change); however, there is no information on when the site was created or if it is monitored/updated.
Creative Commons: