Does exposure to social media lead to poorer perceptions of body image and self-esteem?
Weighting: Worth 50% of final mark (a minimum mark of 25/50 on this assessment is required to pass this unit)
Due date:
Word range: 1500 to 2000 words (including Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion sections, as well as in-text references, but excluding the Reference list)
Questions:
OVERVIEW
This document contains all the data that you will need to write your Method and Results sections of your research report on the relationship between social media use (SMU) and self-esteem, and between SMU and body image. It is divided into three sections:
• Demographic Variables (page 2)
• Inferential Statistics (page 3)
o SMU and self-esteem (page 4)
o SMU and body image (page 5)
o What does it all mean? (page 6)
• Other Descriptive Statistics (page 7)
The data contained within the Demographic Variables and Inferential Statistics sections MUST be included in your report, and formatted according to American Psychological Association (APA) standards; however, it is up to you if you wish to include the data contained in the Other Descriptive Statistics section. Please also refer to the additional information provided in the lectures, on the Moodle site (including the Research Report Handout), and in the recommended readings for this Unit, for further guidance on what to include in your report.
Please note that the raw data for this study will be made available in an Excel file and uploaded onto Moodle; you may consult this, if you would like to see what the unprocessed data looks like. Please also note that the frequency tables and the statistical tests outlined below were calculated using an industry-standard analysis program, called IBM SPSS, version 25. You will learn more about this program as you progress through your degree and psychology career.
Demographic Variables
The information in the box below MUST be reported in the Method section of your report, under the Participants sub-heading, again, formatted according to APA standards. Please note that the data given needs to be reported in written form; i.e., the important information needs to be taken out of the tables provided and written in the text of your report, not in bullet-point or table form (unless this table is in APA format and referred to in the text, e.g., ‘… See Table 1.’).
• One-hundred (100) students from CQUniversity, Australia participated in the survey
• Four (4) participants were excluded from statistical analysis, due to incomplete datasets
• Seven (7) of the remaining ninety-six (96) participants (i.e., 7.29% of the sample) reported not using social media at all during the three-day recording period
Question: What is your age in years?
Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Age 96 17.00 58.00 30.2500 11.37773
Question: What is your sex?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Valid male 13 13.5 13.5 13.5
female 83 86.5 86.5 100.0
Total 96 100.0 100.0
Inferential Statistics
This section of the handout contains output taken directly from the above-mentioned SPSS program. We have analysed the relationship between SMU (IV) and Self-esteem (DV), and between SMU (IV) and body image (DV), using two separate Pearson correlations. The information here should be reported in the Results section of your report. The information on the next few pages includes:
• The results of a correlation analysis that compared social media use (operationalised as the average time spent using all social media accounts over the three-day diary period) and self-esteem (operationalised by scores on the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale).
• The results of a correlation analysis that compared social media use (operationalised as above) and body image (operationalised by scores on the Body Shape Questionnaire).
• Colour-coded information for each analysis. Specifically, we have highlighted the important information from the SPSS output, and outlined what it means. We have also provided an example of how to include this information in the Results section of your report (on Page 6 – please note, this example only relates to the relationship between SMU and self-esteem, but the principles/guidance can also be applied to the SMU and body image analysis).
You may choose to report both correlation analyses (i.e., the one comparing SMU and self-esteem AND the one comparing SMU and body image), or to only report one of these analyses (i.e., the one comparing SMU and self-esteem OR the one comparing SMU and body image). Your decision on this might depend on the nature of the introduction, research aim, and hypothesis/es written in your report.
The scatterplot following each analysis shows the average number of time spent on social media (on the y-axis), according to scores on the self-esteem or body image (on the x-axis of Figures 1 and 2, respectively). Please make sure that you include either a figure or a table in your final submitted report. You can choose to construct and include a different figure or table than the one provided below, using the information in the Excel data file that is on the Moodle page. Otherwise, you are welcome to copy-and-paste the below figure/s into your report. Please make sure that you also include an appropriate figure caption (examples are provided below; however, please do not just copy-and-paste these into your report, but instead, have a go at writing your own), and a reference to your figure/s in the body of your text.
SMU and Self-esteem
CORRELATIONS
/VARIABLES=SMU Self-esteem
/PRINT=TWOTAIL NOSIG
/STATISTICS DESCRIPTIVES
/MISSING=PAIRWISE.
Descriptive Statistics
Mean Std. Deviation N
SMU 96.7345 90.5337 96
Self-esteem 28.8125 6.2497 96
Correlations
SMU Self-esteem
SMU Pearson Correlation 1 -.370
Sig. (2-tailed) .000
N 96 96
Figure 1. Scatterplot and line of best fit depicting the participants’ average daily social media use (SMU; x-axis) by their score on the Rosenberg self-esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965; y-axis).
SMU and Body Image
CORRELATIONS
/VARIABLES=SMU BodyImage
/PRINT=TWOTAIL NOSIG
/STATISTICS DESCRIPTIVES
/MISSING=PAIRWISE.
Descriptive Statistics
Mean Std. Deviation N
SMU 96.7345 90.5337 96
BodyImage 43.1354 18.2668 96
Correlations
SMU BodyImage
SMU Pearson Correlation 1 .140
Sig. (2-tailed) .173
N 96 96
Figure 2. Scatterplot and line of best fit depicting the participants’ average daily social media use (SMU) (x-axis) by their score on the Body Shape Questionnaire (Dowson & Henderson, 2001; y-axis).
What does it all mean?
Correlation analyses provide three (3) useful pieces of information:
1) Whether these is a statistically significant linear trend in the data (indicated by a p-value of less than .05. A p-value of between .05 and .10 indicates that there is a trend for the variables to relate to one another in a linear fashion, but there is still too much noise in the data to be sure of any effects (in this case, caused by a low sample size/not enough statistical power)
2) Whether the relationship is positive (i.e., as scores on one variable increase, scores on the other also increase) or negative (i.e., as scores on one variable increase, scores on the other decrease). This is indicated by whether the Pearson Correlation coefficient is positive or negative, respectively
3) The size of the relationship, indicated by the Pearson Correlation coefficient (a value between -.30 and .30 indicates a weak relationship). Please also see the information table, taken from Cohen (1992), below:
You will be required to write up these results in your research report, according to APA format. An example response has been provided below, and colour-coded according to where the data is found in the SPSS output (on page 4):
A correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between social media use and self-esteem. A significant correlation between self-esteem and social media use; specifically, a moderate negative relationship indicated that more time spent using social media account/s (M = 96.73; SD = 90.53) was associated with lower level of self-esteem (M = 28.81; SD = 6.25), r(94) = -.370, p < .001.
Note, if you report both dependent variables (i.e., self-esteem and body image), then you will need to write two paragraphs like this in order to report the results.
Other Descriptive Statistics
In your report, you may also wish to include a summary of results for any of the following descriptive statistics that were run on the data (please remember that including any statistics from this section is OPTIONAL). If you do wish to include any such information, please place this in the Results section of your report (just before you present your inferential statistics).
Question: How would you describe your sexuality?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative PercentValid Heterosexual 80 83.3 83.3 83.3
Bisexual 9 9.4 9.4 92.7
Homosexual 4 4.2 4.2 96.9
Other 2 2.1 2.1 99.0
Prefer not to say 1 1.0 1.0 100.0
Total 96 100.0 100.0
Question: What is your Body Mass Index (BMI)?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Valid Underweight 5 5.2 5.2 5.2
Healthy weight 48 50.0 50.0 55.2
Overweight 31 32.3 32.3 87.5
Obese 11 11.5 11.5 99.0
Prefer not to say 1 1.0 1.0 100.0
Total 96 100.0 100.0
Question: What level do you consider yourself to be religious?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Valid
Not religious 47 49.0 49.5 49.5
Slightly religious 20 20.8 21.1 70.5
Moderately religious 18 18.8 18.9 89.5
Very religious 4 4.2 4.2 93.7
Don’t know 6 6.3 6.3 100.0
Total 95 99.0 100.0
Other Descriptive Statistics, Continued
Average total number of minutes spent on each social media site over the three-day period
Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Facebook 84 2.00 236.00 49.9048 43.91081
Facebook Messenger 60 .00 120.00 25.1000 29.85882
Instagram 50 2.00 132.00 33.4600 29.95112
Pintrest 2 5.00 11.00 8.0000 4.24264
Tumblr 4 .00 20.00 6.7500 9.06918
Twitter 4 5.00 60.00 28.0000 23.65023
SnapChat 38 .70 360.00 43.5447 73.13649
Reddit 1 25.00 25.00 25.0000 .
Other 12 5.00 240.00 86.6667 73.51232
Valid N (listwise) 84 2.00 236.00 49.9048 43.91081
Sample Solution
