Methods and Results

METHODS AND RESULTS
The format of this work will follow two sub divisions: the methods section and the results (findings) of the study which was to find out if peers (specifically friends) influence exercise.
METHODS
PARTICIPANTS
100 university students were chosen at random to take part in this study. There were 74 males and 26 females with ages stretching from 19-34. The college categories were freshman, sophomore, junior and senior in an ascending order.
MATERIALS
The main instrument material used was questionnaires. Computers and printers were also used to come up with the questionnaires in hard copy. Additionally notebooks were used to note down on important notes. References material for the Cronbach’s alpha scale reliability coefficient was used.
DESIGN
The study was a random sample survey meaning participants were chosen randomly. The questionnaire had a total of 33 questions both open ended and closed. The measure used in the study is the Likert Scale. The questions were both quantitative and qualitative in nature. The variables in this study were ‘attitude about exercise’ and peers (friends).
PROCEDURE
The participants were given a hard copy of the questionnaire to fill out. The questionnaires were given out in a systematic way numbering the surveys systematically. The dependent variable (DV) ‘attitude about exercise’ took the form of labels: ATT1, ATT2, ATT3, ATT4, ATT5, ATT6, ATT7 while the independent variable peer (friends) took the labels: NORM2 and NORM3. Upon completion of filling the questionnaires they were dully arranged in a numbering systematic to avoid any missing data/questionnaire.

RESULTS

Figure 1
The figure above shows the gender composition with respect to the various ages and can clearly be seen that age 21 had the highest participants and age 34 and 35 had no male participant. Ages 27-30 had no representation of females. Another observation was that ages 19, 24 and 26 had the same number of gender representation
Case Processing Summary
N %
Cases Valid 95 95.0
Excludeda5 5.0
Total 100 100.0
a. Listwise deletion based on all variables in the procedure.
Reliability Statistics
Cronbach’s Alpha Cronbach’s Alpha Based on Standardized Items N of Items
.911 .917 24
Figure 2
The Cronbach’s alpha is 0.911 at 95 % level of confidence which is an excellent reliability coefficient. This is true according to George and Mallery (2003) who provide the following rules of thumb: “_ > .9 –Excellent, _ > .8 –Good, _ > .7 – Acceptable, _ > .6 – Questionable, _ > .5 – Poor, and _ < .5 – Unacceptable”. The item labels used for calculating the Cronbach’s alpha were: INT1-INT3, NORM1- NORM6, SE1 – SE8 and ATT1- ATT7
ANOVA table
Sum of Squares dfMean Square F Sig
Between People 2024.493 94 21.537 Within People Between Items 984.189 23 42.791 22.397 .000
Residual 4130.686 2162 1.911 Total 5114.875 2185 2.341 Total 7139.368 2279 3.133 Grand Mean = 5.37
Figure 3
Figure 5 shows the ANOVA with an F-value of 22.397 which is greater than F (23, 2162) hence the reject the null hypothesis and concludes that the items are significantly different.
Statistics
NORM2 NORM3 ATT1 ATT2 ATT3 ATT4 ATT5 ATT6 ATT7
N Valid 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Missing 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Mean 4.49 4.61 6.53 6.25 5.17 6.10 6.30 5.11 6.17
Median 4.00 4.00 7.00 7.00 5.00 7.00 7.00 5.00 7.00
Mode 4 4 7 7 7 7 7 5 7
Std. Deviation 1.480 1.517 1.010 2.376 1.694 1.487 1.360 1.639 1.295
Variance 2.192 2.301 1.019 5.644 2.870 2.212 1.848 2.685 1.678
Minimum 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Maximum 7 7 7 22 7 7 7 7 7
Figure 4
Figure 4 gives the the descriptive statistics of the different label items in question with ATT2 having the largest mean and NORM2 having the lowest mean.
Correlations
NORM2 NORM3 ATT1 ATT2 ATT3 ATT4 ATT5 ATT6 ATT7
NORM2 Pearson Correlation 1 .846** .196 .143 .329** .244* .152 .232* .046
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .050 .156 .001 .015 .131 .020 .652
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
NORM3 Pearson Correlation .846** 1 .163 .137 .230* .201* .082 .156 .039
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .106 .175 .021 .045 .419 .122 .698
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
ATT1 Pearson Correlation .196 .163 1 .382** .325** .570** .442** .196 .324**
Sig. (2-tailed) .050 .106 .000 .001 .000 .000 .050 .001
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
ATT2 Pearson Correlation .143 .137 .382** 1 .152 .456** .255* .175 .173
Sig. (2-tailed) .156 .175 .000 .130 .000 .010 .082 .085
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
ATT3 Pearson Correlation .329** .230* .325** .152 1 .643** .460** .776** .530**
Sig. (2-tailed) .001 .021 .001 .130 .000 .000 .000 .000
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
ATT4 Pearson Correlation .244* .201* .570** .456** .643** 1 .744** .472** .652**
Sig. (2-tailed) .015 .045 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
ATT5 Pearson Correlation .152 .082 .442** .255* .460** .744** 1 .520** .774**
Sig. (2-tailed) .131 .419 .000 .010 .000 .000 .000 .000
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
ATT6 Pearson Correlation .232* .156 .196 .175 .776** .472** .520** 1 .596**
Sig. (2-tailed) .020 .122 .050 .082 .000 .000 .000 .000
N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
ATT7 Pearson Correlation .046 .039 .324** .173 .530** .652** .774** .596** 1
Sig. (2-tailed) .652 .698 .001 .085 .000 .000 .000 .000 N 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Figure 5
Correlation between variables peers/friends(NORM2, NORM3) and attitude about exercise (ATT1-ATT7) show a positive relationship at p-value 0.01 and 0.05 which clearly proves that peers influence attitude on exercise of an individual
Sources
George, D., & Mallery, P. (2003). SPSS for Windows step by step: A simple guide and reference. 11.0 update (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.