StatisticsWritten assignmentCritical appraisal

Data Analysis and Application DAA template guide

Find an empirical journal article in your specialisation reporting a correlation, t test or one-way ANOVA, then complete the five-section DAA Template in no more than 600 words covering summary and variables, assumptions, hypotheses, APA-formatted results and conclusions with strengths and limitations.

Aug 13, 2026

Editorial process

Last reviewed · August 13, 2026

Written by

Aaron Bishop

MA, Education

assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines

Reviewed by

Dr. Nathan Cole

PhD, Rhetoric & Composition

Argumentation and thesis development

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Interpret the task
Assignment instructions
Deliverables
Proposed outline
Research plan
Reference shortlist
Final review

Choosing the article decides the difficulty

Almost all of the difficulty in this assignment is decided before you write anything, by which article you choose. The requirements are narrow: empirical and data-based, not qualitative or purely descriptive, in your career specialisation, and reporting a correlation, a t test, a one-way ANOVA or some combination. Beyond meeting those, the article has to actually report enough for you to complete Section 4, which asks for the statistical notation, the degrees of freedom, the value of r, t or F, the p value and the effect size where one is given. Papers that report only p values, or that bury results in a figure, will make that section impossible to write correctly. Check that Section 4 could be completed in full before committing to the article, and prefer one with a clearly laid out results table over one that reports its statistics inside the prose. Ten minutes spent on that check saves rewriting the whole submission around a second article later.

The 600-word ceiling is the second constraint and the prompt is emphatic that less is better. That forces choices: Section 1 needs the variables defined with their scales of measurement and the sample size, and it does not need the study's background. Section 2 is the one most likely to be under-written, because it asks about the assumptions of the statistical test used and whether the article says how they were tested. Many articles say nothing, and the prompt explicitly tells you that silence is a limitation to report rather than a gap to fill, so naming the assumptions of the test and stating that the article does not address them is the correct answer. Section 3 wants the research question with an explicit null and alternative hypothesis, which the article will usually not have stated formally, so you have to write them. Keep Section 4 purely mechanical and save the judgement for Section 5.

Likely learning objectives

Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.

01
Select an empirical article whose reported statistics can actually be interpreted.
02
Classify variables by role and by scale of measurement.
03
State the assumptions of a correlation, t test or one-way ANOVA.
04
Write formal null and alternative hypotheses from an informal research question.
05
Report statistical results in APA format, including degrees of freedom and effect size.

Assignment instructionsQuoted verbatim

Read the full question

Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.

For this assignment, you will identify a published research article either in the print literature or online in the Capella Library. Your article must be based on empirical (data-based) research; qualitative or purely descriptive research is not appropriate. Select a journal article in your career specialization that reports a correlation, a t test, a one-way ANOVA, or some combination of these test statistics. The library guides listed in the Resources area can help you to locate appropriate articles. The intent of this assignment is to: Expose you to professional literature in your discipline. Provide practice in the interpretation of statistical results contained in an empirical (data-based) journal article. Provide practice in writing and thinking in a concise and economical manner that is typical of scientific discourse. You will summarize the article in a maximum of 600 words using the DAA Template located in the Resources area. Specific instructions for completing each section of the DAA Template are listed below. You may use some of the author\’s own words to summarize the article with proper citation, but avoid lengthy direct quotes (such as copying multiple sentences or paragraphs verbatim). You should not exceed the limit of 600 words. This is a situation where less is better. Step 1: Write Section 1 of the DAA. Provide a brief summary of the journal article. Include a definition of the specified variables (predictor, outcome) and corresponding scales of measurement (nominal, continuous). Specify the sample size of the data set. Discuss why the journal article is relevant to your career specialization. Step 2: Write Section 2 of the DAA. Discuss the assumptions of the statistical test used in the journal article. If possible, identify information in the article about how these assumptions were tested. If no information on assumptions is provided, consider this as a limitation of the reported study. Step 3: Write Section 3 of the DAA. Specify the research question from the journal article. Articulate the null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis. Step 4: Write Section 4 of the DAA. Report the results of the statistical test using proper APA guidelines. This includes: The statistical notation (such as r, t, or F). The degrees of freedom. The statistical value of r, t, or F, and the p value. Report the effect size and interpretation if one is provided. Interpret the test statistic with regard to the null hypothesis. Step 5: Write Section 5 of the DAA. Discuss the conclusions of the statistical test as it relates to the research question. Conclude with an analysis of the strengths and limitations of the study reported in the journal article. Submit your DAA Template as an attached Word document in the assignment area.

Turn the brief into deliverables

01
Section 1: a brief summary, variable definitions with scales of measurement, sample size and career relevance.
02
Section 2: the assumptions of the statistical test and whether the article tested them.
03
Section 3: the research question with null and alternative hypotheses.
04
Section 4: results in APA format with notation, degrees of freedom, statistic, p value and effect size.
05
Section 5: conclusions relating to the research question, plus strengths and limitations.
06
The completed DAA Template, submitted as a Word document, under 600 words.

The five DAA sections

Choosing the article

Meeting the empirical, specialisation and test-type criteria, and checking results are reported fully.

Section 1: summary and variables

Predictor and outcome variables, scales of measurement, sample size, career relevance.

Section 2: assumptions

The assumptions of the test used, and what the article says about testing them.

Section 3: hypotheses

The research question with formal null and alternative hypotheses.

Section 4: results

APA-formatted reporting with all required components.

Section 5: conclusions

What the result means for the research question, with strengths and limitations.

One article, read properly

Recommended databases

Capella Library
PubMed
PsycINFO
ERIC
Google Scholar

Search sequence

1.
Search your specialisation for articles reporting the named tests, filtering to empirical studies.
2.
Open the results section first and confirm the statistics are reported in full.
3.
Read the methods for the sample size and the measurement level of each variable.
4.
Look up the assumptions of the specific test before writing Section 2.
5.
Check the APA reporting format for that statistic before writing Section 4.

Reference shortlist

These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.

Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.

01
Hypothesis Testing, P Values, Confidence Intervals, and Significance
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Null and alternative hypotheses, p values and significance, for Sections 3 and 4.
02
Types of Variables and Commonly Used Statistical Designs
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Variable roles and scales of measurement, and which test suits which design, for Section 1.
03
Correlation (Coefficient, Partial, and Spearman Rank) and Regression Analysis
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2024
Assumptions and interpretation for articles reporting a correlation.
04
Study Bias
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
A vocabulary for the strengths and limitations discussion in Section 5.

Review before submission

Common mistakes

Choosing a qualitative or purely descriptive article, which the prompt excludes.
Choosing an article that does not report degrees of freedom or the test statistic.
Skipping Section 2 because the article says nothing about assumptions.
Writing hypotheses in words that do not correspond to the test actually run.
Quoting long passages when the prompt warns against lengthy direct quotes.
Exceeding the 600-word limit by summarising the study's background.

Submission checklist

The article is empirical and reports a correlation, t test or one-way ANOVA.
Variables are named with their roles and scales of measurement.
The sample size is stated.
Test assumptions are named, and silence in the article is reported as a limitation.
Null and alternative hypotheses are stated formally.
Section 4 includes notation, degrees of freedom, the statistic, the p value and effect size if given.
The submission is within 600 words and uses the DAA Template.

Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.