Question

An eating disorders clinic would like to evaluate the effectiveness of a mindfulness training program on binge eating disorder (BED). A psychologist was therefore hired to conduct a small study to examine the potential effect of mindfulness training on number of binges per month. The psychologist recruited 10 patients in the clinic to participate in a mindfulness training program and 12 patients in the clinic with similar demographics who do not participate in the mindfulness program. Afterward, all participants reported the number of binges from the previous month. The data are listed in the table below. The psychologist is not predicting a particular direction of the potential differences between the two groups and she sets the alpha level at .05 for the hypothesis test.

1. a) What is the dependent (outcome) variable? What is the independent (grouping) variable?

1. b) Create the null and alternative hypotheses for this study, using both words and symbol notation

1. c) Calculate M₁ andM₂

1. d) Calculate df₁ , df₂, and df_total  

1. e) Calculate ²₁ and ²₂ (estimated variance for population 1 and variance for population 2)

1. f) Calculate the pooled variance for the two populations

1. g) Use the pooled variance to calculate the variance for sampling distribution 1 and the variance for sampling distribution 2

Answer 1

GIVEN DATA

An eating disorders clinic would like to evaluate the effectiveness of a mindfulness training program on binge eating disorder (BED). A psychologist was therefore hired to conduct a small study to examine the potential effect of mindfulness training on number of binges per month.