Problem Set 2: The independent-samples t test

Research Scenario: A forensic psychologist has developed a new program that teaches empathy and positive social skills to youth offenders who are incarcerated for a violent offense. She wants to know whether this new treatment is more effective in increasing empathy than the standard treatment that these youth offenders usually receive. She sets up a treatment group that consists of 8 youth offenders incarcerated for violent offenses who will receive the new treatment. Her control group consists of 8 similar youth offenders who receive the standard treatment only. At the end of treatment, she administers the Basic Empathy Scale (BES; Jolliffe and Farrington, 2006), a 20-item questionnaire where higher scores indicate higher levels of empathy, and records the results in the table below.

Using this table, enter the data into a new SPSS data file and run an independent-samples t test to test the claim that violent youth offenders who receive the new treatment will have higher BES scores than violent youth offenders who receive standard treatment. Follow the directions below the table to complete the homework.

New Treatment Standard Treatment

54 47

39 46

42 25

58 13

37 52

51 36

41 50

50 41

1.Paste SPSS output.(7 pts)

2.Write Results section based on your analysis. Include your boxplot as a figure (Results = 8 pts; Graph = 5 pts)