PART 2 INSTRUCTIONS: Another way nursing students get hands-on learning experiences is by using hired actors to serve as patients rather than mechanical dummies. A benefit of doing so is that student nurses can be evaluated on their "soft skills" (sometimes called "bedside manner"). This is an important way that hospitals in general are evaluated by national accreditation boards. Because of this, the nursing department has launched an optional "soft skills" course for their students. Since its launch 2 years ago, 500 students opted in to participate and 500 students opted out of participation. To determine if the course is effective, the nursing department asked the hired actors to take a survey which measures the degree of satisfaction the "patient" had with their nursing student (scale from 0 - 50 with greater scores implying greater satisfaction). The nursing department wishes to compare the mean satisfaction scores between students who participated in the soft skills course with mean satisfaction scores from students who did not participate in the soft skills course. The department suspects the mean scores will differ. The data are contained in the "Nursing Soft Skills Data" Excel spreadsheet. With these data, I want you to:
1. Specify the population of interest
2. Specify the outcome variable
3. Specify the explanatory variable
4. Specify the parameter(s) being analyzed
5. Specify the general analytical method to be used
6. Specify the research hypothesis
7. Generate a side-by-side boxplot. Does this visualization provide support for the research hypothesis?
8. Report the sample mean level of satisfaction for the non-participating group.
9. Report the sample mean level of satisfaction for the participating group.
10. Compare the means. Does the difference in sample means provide support for the research hypothesis?
11. For the appropriate test, specify the alternative hypothesis.
12. For the appropriate test, specify the null hypothesis.
13. Report the p-value associated with the test.
14. Using the result from question 13, do the data more strongly support the null or alternative hypotheses?
15. Report Cohen's d along with its categorization (e.g., large, medium, small, negligible).
16. Given all of the information presented here, does the soft skills course seem effective at improving student nurses' soft skills?
