Motivation of drug dealers. Refer to the Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice (Sept. 2009) investigation of the personality characteristics of drug dealers, Exercise 2.98 (p. 71). Convicted drug dealers were scored on the Wanting Recognition (WR) Scale—a scale which provides a quantitative measure of a person’s level of need for approval and sensitivity to social situations. (Higher scores indicate a greater need for approval.) Based on the study results, we can assume that the WR scores for the population of convicted drug dealers has a mean of 40 and a standard deviation of 5. Suppose that in a sample of n = 100 people, the mean WR scale score is   = 42. Is this sample likely to have been selected from the population of convicted drug dealers? Explain.

Exercise 2.98

Motivation of drug dealers. Researchers at Georgia State University investigated the personality characteristics of drug dealers in order to shed light on their motivation for participating in the illegal drug market ( Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice , Sept. 2009). The sample consisted of 100 convicted drug dealers who attended a court-mandated counseling program. Each dealer was scored on the Wanting Recognition (WR) Scale, which provides a quantitative measure of a person’s level of need for approval and sensitivity to social situations. (Higher scores indicate a greater need for approval.) The sample of drug dealers had a mean WR score of 39, with a standard deviation of 6. Assume the distribution of WR scores for drug dealers is mound shaped and symmetric.

a. Give a range of WR scores that will contain about 95% of the scores in the drug dealer sample.

b. What proportion of the drug dealers will have WR scores above 51?

c. Give a range of WR sores that will contain nearly all the scores in the drug dealer sample.