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Mcs 3500 Week 3

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MCS*3500 W15 – Market Analysis and Planning
Professor: Sud, Bharat
GTA: Ferdausi, Sultana
Tyler Ciprietti | tcipriet@mail.uoguelph.ca | ID#: 0786162

Reflection 2 | Testing Causal Direction in the Influence of Presumed Media Influence

1. Describe the context (why it was done, the general interest and what the researchers wanted to find out) of the research and research question (what is the hypothesis). /10
According to the influence of presumed media influence hypothesis, people estimate the potential effects of media on other people change their attitudes or behaviours as a consequence. In 1983, Columbia University sociologist W. Phillips Davison published an influential article titled “The Third Person Effect in Communication”. This …show more content…

The experiment was conducted in class during lecture hours and 11 participants reported they never purchase sugar and were omitted from the results. Experimenters explained that participants were to answer a short survey about media impact on purchase decisions and handed out randomly two versions of a two-page pamphlet. In the first page, participants were asked to read a newspaper article about an expected shortage in sugar that is about to be published. In the second page, the participants were asked to answer three questionnaires, one measuring reactions to the publication of the shortage of sugar, and the second served as a manipulation check, and the final set of questions were demographic. The manipulation of perceived influence followed research demonstrating that perceived exposure is a strong predictor of the perception that media affects others. The respondents were given information about the shortage of sugar being posted on the front page of a newspaper, and others were told that the story was located in the internal page of the economic news area. The independent variable in this study was the condition in which the news story was located on the front page, or located within the paper. This would be measured by stating either 0= front page or 1= inside story. The dependent variable is the reaction of students …show more content…

The direct relationship has become more insignificant with the addition of the mediator variables. Although the researchers saw an almost significant relationship, the mediators indirect path looks significant and the direct path looks insignificant. If we can show that a mediator variable significantly explains a direct path, and a direct path becomes more significant, it fully explains why more condition (X) leads to (Y). The matrix originally determined the direct relationship being equal to P=0.0766, but with the mediators, the direct relationship has a P-value of 0.3211.
(Total Effect + Mediator = 0.3211& the indirect effect + a1xb1 = 0.2413)
We can conclude that pmi is a significant mediator and explains why the condition of putting the news in the back or front influences the actions of the students purchasing decisions. Next, the SPSS matrix process changed focused on the importance variable. The same figure (figure 2) can be used to represent this relationship, however importance becomes the new M variable, and the a1 b1 lines will change to a2 and b2. Since the condition (pmi) changed to importance, the researchers hoped to view a more influential relationship that will explain why students will change their purchasing decisions. The new diagram can be seen

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