Your friend Dillard is a researcher who has recently been attempting to

Your friend Dillard is a researcher who has recently been attempting to study the effects of political messaging on college graduates’ and non-grads’ spending on entertainment. He also wants to understand the effects of social media exposure on entertainment spending as well. He designed a study and got his results in. However, Dillard doesn’t know how to interpret his results and needs your help to figure out what they mean.

Dillard had limited funds and connections and so he gained access to two distinct populations. He had one group of 200 individuals who were randomly sampled from the graduating class of the University of Mississippi 2022. He also got a sample of 200 non-grads gathered at the local mall in Mobile Alabama to use as a control group. He got his procedure approved by the IRB and carried it out fully ethically including informed consent and debriefing. He wanted to apply 2 different levels of political advertising (left-wing or right-wing) to both groups before giving his participants (both grads and non-grads) either 0 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour to browse their social media before giving them several choices to purchase a wide variety of political merch. All participants in both groups were evenly and randomly assigned to each factor combination. He measured how much each participant spent on the political merch.

For college graduates he claims his results were as follows. Using ANOVA, he found a main effect for political advertisement (f = .6, p = .06) on spending. He found a main effect for social media exposure (f = .3, p = .015) on spending, and an interaction effect between political advertising and social media exposure on spending (f = .08, p = .003). The factorial chart of the group means are as follows.

DV = mean spending in dollars

0 minutes of SM

30 minutes of SM

1 hour of SM

Right-wing exposure

$72

$54

$94

Left-wing exposure

$53

$96

$73

For non-graduates he claims his results were as follows. Using ANOVA, he found a main effect for political advertisement (f = .4, p = .50) on spending. He found a main effect for social media exposure (f = .9, p = .005) on spending, and an interaction effect between political advertising and social media exposure on spending (f = .02, p = .057). The factorial chart of the group means are as follows.

DV = mean spending in dollars

0 minutes of SM

30 minutes of SM

1 hour of SM

Right-wing exposure

$52

$76

$102

Left-wing exposure

$51

$73

$94

Knowing what you know now about interpreting factorial designs, and assuming he used the standard criterion value of .05; help Dillard explain the results of his study. Be sure to not only explain in detail the effects that he found, but how you know they are significant results, their direction, and meaning. Also, be sure to address and fully explain at least 1 potential issue that may be limiting the generalizability/internal validity of his findings due to his experimental design.

Formatting note:  I would write the essay in the following format for best results.

Paragraph I (intro) Dillard found a variety of interesting significant effects.  He found a significant main effect of X, Y, Z, A, B, …… and M. Despite these findings he also had an important limitation to his results of………… I will discuss the specifics of these findings in the following paragraphs.

Paragraphs X-M  He found a main/interaction effect for X. This indicates that _______. It is a significant finding because _________. (Note if you find a significant interaction effect, it needs to be explored appropriately).

Paragraph Last (closing) As can be seen, Dillard found a variety of significant differences of the effects of political advertising, and social media exposure on grads and non-grads. These effects must be taken in light of the studies limitation/s __________. This limitation reduces/limits/etc __________.

NOTE:  This is scientific writing, cut out all extra words, don’t use vagueries, the writing shouldn’t be flashy, it should be precise and meaningful.  It is ok to have very similar paragraphs and sentences, you are trying to convey your point in as few but most precise words as possible.  Extra words will be your greatest enemy in this assignment. Be sure to support your claims with the appropriate numbers from the prompt when appropriate.

Grading will be based off how completely and accurately you help explain Dillard’s findings and limitations. 

DO NOT go over 2 pages (800 words in our case) (-5) points, you are welcome to go under however, it does not need to be the full 2 pages. 

You don’t need to “define” any concepts in this paper, you simply need to describe and explain Dillard’s findings and how you know they are significant. 

Again, it is ok if most of your paragraphs look highly similar (scientific writing, not poetry).