Writing Resources

At faculty request, the ARC contains a list of useful links in three areas of research: Writing, quantitative methods, and APA style. We are especially indebted to Dr. Bob Gass and Dr. John Reinard who contributed the majority of these links.

APA Style

WRITING RESOURCES

Writing Center

While the center is primarily for students enrolled in English Department writing classes, tutors will assist all university students in writing papers for CSUF classes. Tutors will offer constructive suggestions, but will not proofread or edit papers.

Humanities 528

(657) 278-3650

Visit the writing center

Collaborative On-line Preparation Initiatives program

COPI is a site designed for a variety of users, but it includes some very useful basic grammar guides. Click here to visit the COPI site.

John Reinard's Page

As one of the outstanding researchers in our field and a regular instructor of SpComm 308, Dr. Reinard has developed one of the most comprehensive lists of links on writing help. Visti John Reinard's page.

Academic Honesty

All writing must be your own, original work and present your own, original ideas. Of course, in presenting these ideas you must cite other work. University policy on academic honesty can be found here.

Web Links to Statistics Pages

WAYS OF KNOWING

link to four ways of knowing

http://www.les.appstate.edu/courses/research/Session3/sld002.htm

HYPOTHESES AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

good discussion of types of hypotheses

http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/HYPOTHES.HTM

interactive link on making hypotheses testable

http://gateway1.gmcc.ab.ca/~digdonn/psych104/think.htm#explore

link with interactive practice on writing hypotheses

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/Courses/Ed690AB/Class02/Hypothesis.html

MEASUREMENT, TYPES OF DATA

good summary of the four levels of measurement

http://www.andrews.edu/~calkins/math/webtexts/stat01.htm#LEVELS

good explanation of levels of measurement with useful grahpics to illustrate concepts

http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/measlevl.htm

good summary of levels of measurement

ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/measurement.html#lvls_meas

clear explanation of levels of measurement, text only (no cool graphics)

http://infinity.sequoias.cc.ca.us/faculty/woodbury/Stats/Tutorial/Data_Levels.htm

a good, if somewhat dry, explanation of the four levels of measurement for data

http://soais.byu.edu/courses/ISYS580/Modules/stats/sta-ch3.htm

TRAIT & PERSONALITY TESTS

This Website has a bevy of on-line IQ and personality tests that you can take.

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/4698/tests.html

This link has an assortment of simple, quick personality tests.

http://www.2h.com/Tests/personality.phtml

assorted, fun, IQ and personality tests.

http://www.davideck.com/

This link has "pop" psychology tests measuring various states and traits

http://www.allhealth.com/onlinepsych/

VALIDITY & RELIABILITY

short, sweet summary of validity and reliability

http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter/references/research/relval/list2.htm

clear, brief summary of reliability and validity

http://www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/soc511.cz.html

thorough summary of threats to validity

http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/tutorial/colosi/lcolosi2.htm

good overview of validity and reliability

http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/rel%26val.htm

thorough review of validity and reliability

http://web.lwc.edu/staff/dkelley/Socl345/validity/index.htm

SAMPLES AND SAMPLING, RANDOMIZATION

Types of probabalistic samples

http://147.134.144.30/knudsen/SAMPLE/index.htm

Applet that produces random samples of M&Ms, based on color

http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/applets/mandmtest.html

A nifty tutorial that illustrates random sampling, random assignment, and random ordering of stimuli.

http://www.randomizer.org/

handy, cool, random number generator

http://www.stat.ucla.edu/calculators/cdf/normal/normalrand.phtml

SURVEY RESEARCH

General Social Survey

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS99/index.html

ON-LINE DATABASES

http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/stats.html

General Social Survey (GSS)

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS99/index.html

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS

http://www.uakron.edu/edcouns/counseling/people/rogers-original/designs/

Explanation of factorial designs

http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/EXPFACT.HTM

Explanation of main effects and interaction effects

http://www.davidmlane.com/hyperstat/factorial_ANOVA.html

Good explanation of two-way ANOVA and interaction effects

http://www.psychstat.smsu.edu/MultiBook/mlt09m.html

on-line article on music, scents and consumer shopping behavior. Demonstrates main and interaction effects

http://www.fba.nus.edu.sg/fba/mscphd/Index0015.htm

THREE FACTOR DESIGN

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/hyperstat/B121067.html

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

Interactive site that illustrates the mean and median

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/descriptive/index.html

Mean versus median Applet. Change one score in a data set (by moving it around) and see what effect is has on the mean and the median.

http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/applets/box.html

Dr. B's Twisted Proverbs: Dr. Beatrice Baldwin's summary of basic statistical concepts (mean, standard deviation) in a Powerpoint slide show. Good, but a bit on the simplistic side.

http://www.selu.edu/Academics/Education/EDF600/Mod8/index.htm

basic concepts related to statistics, including mean, median, and standard deviation

http://www.nilesonline.com/stats/

descriptive statistics: a very good, clear summary (scroll all the way down to number 6, "statistics and sampling" and select the link labeled "descriptive statistics")

http://www.arts.ubc.ca/polisci/poli380/

descriptive statistics web site: clear explanation and example, scroll down for specifics on mean, median. mode, variance, standard deviation

http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/hill/dstat/dstat.html

USA Today statistics in brief: examples of summary statistics on various subjects

http://www.census.gov/statab/www/brief.html

descriptive statistics: good examples of histograms, scattergrams, and other graphic representations of data http://www.math.gatech.edu/~bourbaki/1700/DescriptiveStatistics/Statistics.html

descriptive statistics--very basic info

http://web.utk.edu/~toddc/s98l2.html

program that calculates descriptive statistics (you have to have data of your own to enter)

http://www.biocrawler.com/psy/desc.html

practice at calculating the standard deviation for a small set of numbers

http://www.uoregon.edu/~chemlabs/genchem/drills/stdev.cgi

PROBABILITY THEORY, INFERENTIAL STATISTICS

Applet that measures "psychic" ability by letting you guess the outcome of a coin toss over repeated trials (with enough trials, your results should approximate the true probability of .50)

http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/applets/psychictest.html

Applet that illustrates mean and standard deviation

http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/applets/normaldemo1.html

excellent animated example of a Gaussian or bell curve

http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/java/stat/GaltonMachine.html

Quicktime movie of a normal distribution

http://huizen.dds.nl/~berrie/normal.html

interactive example of normal distributions and how changes in the mean and standard deviation affect the shape of the curve (play around with the two toggle bars near the bottom)

http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~naras/jsm/NormalDensity/NormalDensity.html

good animated illustration of sample size and its relationship to a true distribution (as the sample size increases, the sample distribution comes closer and closer to the true distribution)

http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/java/stat/EmpDis.html

the logic of hypothesis testing (there are 11 sections under the "Contents" heading that are useful and informative)

http://math.uc.edu/statistics/hyperstat/logic_hypothesis.html

hypothesis testing Applet

http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/javahtml/power.html

Statistics Applets

http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/applets/cyberg.html

Central Limit Theorum

http://www.stattucino.com/berrie/dsl/cltjava.html

TYPE I AND TYPE II ERRORS

links to Type I and Type II errors

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/hyperstat/A18652.html

robustness of the t-test: This applet lets you explore the effect of violations of the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance on the type I error rate and power of t tests

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/robustness/index.html

SIGNIFICANCE TESTING--GENERAL

Helpful glossary and summary of basic statistical concepts and statistical tests

http://www.windsor.igs.net/~nhodgins/stat_statistics.html

On-line information on many aspects of statistics. Lots of useful interactive links to statistical concepts and principles.

http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/index.html

CORRELATION

illustration of varying degrees of correlation

http://www.uiah.fi/projekti/metodi/181.htm

animation showing positive and negative correlations

http://research.ed.asu.edu/siip/movie.gal/Default.htm

practice "eyeballing" correlations: this interactive site that lets you guess the degree of correlation among four scatterplots.

http://www.stat.uiuc.edu/~stat100/java/guess/GCApplet.html

interactive link: you input two sets of numbers (X and Y variables) and a scattergram and other data is created.

http://www.stat.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/textbook/corr-comp.cgi

look at a scatterplot for two variables, x,y, and see how changing one of the variables changes the scatterplot.

http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/desc_biv.html

practice eyeballing and drawing your own regression line onto a scatterplot

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/reg_by_eye/index.html

explanation of statistical tests for rank ordered correlations

http://hendrix.ei.dtu.dk/staff/students/fnielsen/thesis/finn/node119.html

components of r demonstration: you get to change some perameters in a scatterplot and see how it affects the slope and spread of the data points.

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/comp_r/index.html

good, basic summary of Pearson r

http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/desc_biv.html

DIFFERENCES

Detailed tutorial on Chi Square, fairly clear examples.

http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/webtools/web_chi_tut.html

sample example and explanation of chi-square (actually cross-tabs, in the example given)

http://media.tasc.ac.uk/sobol/survey5/chi.htm

chi square Applet, let's you plug in data and perform a Chi Square test

http://www.stat.uiuc.edu/~stat100/java/chisquare/ChiSquareApplet.html

chi square problem and demonstration--pretty good.

http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/patel/chisquare/keyprob.html

god, simple explanation of the t-test and one-way ANOVA

http://www.angelo.edu/~halfmann/differences1.htm

multiple regression example

http://members.aol.com/johnp71/prophaz2.html

interactice advice on which statistical test to use, asks a series of questions, then comes up with the appropriate test.

http://trochim.human.cornell.edu/selstat/ssstart.htm

interactive statistics site, lots of difference tests or comparisons http://members.aol.com/johnp71/javastat.html#Comparisons

excellent interactive example of contingency tables

http://media.tasc.ac.uk/sobol/survey5/

REGRESSION

Interactive website that lets you practice "eyeballing" a regression line by drawing one in on a scatterplot.

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/reg_by_eye/index.html

ETHICS

summary of the basic requirements for �informed consent�

http://www.er.doe.gov/production/ober/humsubj/brochure/questn4.html

American Psychological Association Code of Ethics (all the rules and procedures required by the APA)

http://www.apa.org/ethics/code.html

Code of Ethics of the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association (all the rules and procedures for Communicative Disorders students)

http://csep.iit.edu/codes/coe/american%20speech%2C%20lang%2C%20and%20hearing%20assoc%2094.html

summary of the Tuskagee Syphilis Study (a fascinating and depressing analysis of an agregious violation of ethics in experimental research)

http://members.home.com/jtstocks/prof/ethics/tuskg.html

Article on the prevalence of scientific fraud and what should be done about it

http://www.chem.vt.edu/ethics/vinny/www_ethx.html

Belmont Report: The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects has identified ethical principles related to research using human subjects

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/oprr/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm

Codes of ethics for various fields and disciplines

http://csep.iit.edu/codes/codes.html

D.O.E. media sound and video clips on radiation testing.

http://tis.eh.doe.gov/ohre/multimedia/film/index.html

Atomic Veterans link

http://www.naav.com/index.htm

Atomic veterans photo gallery

http://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/plumb4.htm

FUNNY OR WEIRD SITES

A humorous site that uses terminology from controlled experiments, but doesn't really followed the scientific method.

http://www.pcola.gulf.net/~irving/bunnies/index.html

Annals of Improbable Research: Actual published studies, but ones that are weird, goofy, or seem pointless. The "Ignoble" Prizes, and the "Bearded men" studies are made me laugh.

http://www.improb.com/

A.P.A. STYLE (GENERAL GUIDELINES)

Good menu-driven advice on how to follow A.P.A. Style. Scroll down to the sections on "Students' Questions About References."

http://webster.commnet.edu/apa/apa_index.htm

Another helpful link that explains how to conform to A.P.A. Style. (If it asks for a password, click "Cancel" and it should still take you to the website.

http://www.psywww.com/resource/apacrib.htm

This update from the website of the American Psychological Association (APA) gives further info on how to cite various kinds of literature retrieved from Web sites.

http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html

Good menu-driven advice on how to follow A.P.A. Style. Scroll down to the sections on "Students' Questions About References."

http://webster.commnet.edu/apa/apa_index.htm

A good overview of A.P.A. style. This website provides examples of how to quote excerpts of articles within a paper, and how to cite a variety of references at the end of a paper.

http://www.ldl.net/~bill/aparev.htm

This update from the website of the American Psychological Association (APA) gives further info on how to cite various kinds of literature retrieved from Web sites.

http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html

Assorted links to other websites that explain how to conform to A.P.A. Style.

http://www.psywww.com/resource/apacrib.htm