P-Value_Significance_Article_Analysis

P-Value Significance Article Analysis (I2) Sarah Martin RES 342 September 22, 2010 Stephen Loro P-Value Significance Article Analysis (I2) * Research Problem: The problem is that a specific assessment for testing readiness skills is lacking for children entering kindergarten (Allen, August 2009). * Research Question: 1. Is there a significant difference between school readiness screening scores of pre-kindergarten students who participated in any type of early childhood educational programs and the pre-kindergarten students who did not participate in any type of early childhood education program (Allen, August 2009)' 2. Is there a significant difference between school readiness screening scores of pre-kindergarten male and female students upon their entrance into kindergarten (Allen, August 2009)' * Research Purpose: The purpose of this research was to identify the difference in the school readiness scores of students who experienced some type of early childhood programs as opposed to students who did not participate in an early childhood program and the difference in school readiness screening scores between female and male students involved in this study (Allen, August 2009). * Hypothesis: * Null 1. There is no significant difference between the school readiness screening scores of the pre-kindergarten students who participated in any type of early childhood education programs and the pre-kindergarten students who did not participate in any type of early childhood educational program (Allen, August 2009). 2. There is no significant difference between the school readiness screening scores of the pre-kindergarten male and female students upon their entrance into kindergarten (Allen, August 2009). Alternative 1. There is a significant difference between the school readiness screening scores of the pre-kindergarten students who participated in any type of early childhood education programs and the pre-kindergarten students who did not participate in any type of early childhood educational program (Allen, August 2009). 2. There is a significant difference between the school readiness screening scores of the pre-kindergarten male and female students upon their entrance into kindergarten (Allen, August 2009). * Research Conclusion: * Before Cynthia R Allen started this research, she had to obtain permission from the Board of Education of the school she wanted to use. She gathered her information on students who attended a small rural school district in Southern Missouri. At the time of the study, there were 540 students. She used two different criteria to choose the readiness scores needed. The first was that the student records must contain readiness scores at the time of entering kindergarten. The student must be actively attending school in that district was the second criteria used. Cynthia took the needed records from the 2008-2009 school year. She collected the data from 321 students. * To determine whether a significant difference existed between scores of students who did take some kind of early childhood education and those who did not, Cynthia used a casual-comparative study. She then used comparative testing of the casual-comparative study to determine if there was a difference between the scores of males and females. * Cynthia used a t-test to determine if there was a difference of the means of the casual-comparative study. She also used a t-test to determine the possible difference between the males and females. She used GraphPad InStat, version 3.06 to enter the mean scores and calculate a two-tailed P-value test. The P-value threshold was set at a significance of 0.05. * For the first question, Cynthia calculated a P-value of 2.095. With these results, she rejected the first null hypothesis. She found that a significant difference did exist between student readiness scores of those who did take early childhood education and those who did not. For her second question, she calculated a P-value of 0.2902. Because of this calculation, she accepted the second null hypothesis. She concluded that there was not a significant difference between male and female readiness scores. Reference Allen, C. R. (August 2009). Effect of Early Childhood Education Programs on School Readiness. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest LLC. Steven Loro, University of Phoenix. (2010). Classroom PowerPoint. Retrieved August 11, 2010, RES 341/342 from: http://classroom.phoenix.edu/afm211/secure/view-thread.jspa'threadID=24957195 Steven Loro, University of Phoenix. (2010). Classroom Syllabus. Retrieved August 11, 2010, RES 341/342 from: http://classroom.phoenix.edu/afm211/secure/view-thread.jspa'threadID=24870094