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Real World Meaning
Recall that when we interpret the real world meaning of a study, we want to refrain from using
any statistical jargon—that is to say, we want people who know nothing about statistics (a
parent, your roommate, your friends, etc.) to be able to understand what the results of our
statistical test are telling us about psychological phenomenon.
How would you describe the results of this study to someone who knows nothing about
statistics? One thing that’s helpful is to think about what important pieces of information do we
want to come across to the audience? In this example, we want to be able to communicate that
the participants, reported higher scores of bystander self- efficiency scores after attending one
session of a bystander intervention program compared to before attending one session. If I were
describing the results of this study to my uncle, I would say the following:
Bystander intervention programs teach people ways they can stand up and help intervene
to prevent sexual assault. Participants who attended one-session of a bystander
intervention program felt more confident in their ability to act to prevent sexual assault
after the program.
It should be noted that Banyard and colleagues (2007) conducted more complex analyses than
what we cover in this course. The researchers included a Control Group and a 3-Session
Intervention Group as well to establish a stronger experimental research design. They also
measured participants across additional time points at 2-months, 4-months, and 12 months after
the intervention. Because they also had multiple dependent variables they were interested in, the
analyses they conducted were called a multivariance analysis of variance (MANOVA) to see if
there were differences between the three conditions (i.e., control, one-session, and three-session
groups). Additionally, they conducted repeated measures analysis to look at change over time,
while controlling for participant gender by conducting a repeated measure multivariate analysis
of covariance (MANCOVA). You will be very happy to know both of those analyses are beyond
the scope of this class. :)
Overall, Banyard and colleagues (2007) found that participants in their one-and-three session
groups reported significantly more knowledge of sexual violence, bystander attitudes, bystander
behaviors, and bystander efficacy after attending the intervention. Additionally, they reported
less rape myth acceptance. If you would like to learn more about bystander intervention
programs, visit the National Sexual Violence Resources Center for more information.