Social Studies 201
Fall 2006
Optional
problem set for extra credit – Due December 13, 2006
If you decide to
answer all or part of this problem set, you can obtain up to four (4)
percentage points of extra credit toward your final grade. That is, whatever you obtain on these
problems (out of 4) will be added to the grade you would otherwise
receive. Answering some or all of these
problems cannot lower your grade, but could raise it.
The following problems ask you to analyze the connection between federal
political preference (variable fv – the last
variable in the data file) and some attitude/opinion variables in the ssae98.sav
file located in folder t:\students\public\201. Data on federal political preference come from
question 16 but have been re-classified into four categories: Liberal, NDP,
Conservative, and None. The following
problems ask you to examine the relationship between the federal political
preference of students and several opinion variables from question 15 of the questionnaire:
V1 (views on free trade), V2 (opinion about people helping
themselves), and V8 (user fees for health care).
- First, obtain frequency
distributions and histograms for the four variables fv, V1, V2, and
V8. Also obtain the means and
standard deviations for the latter three opinion variables. Briefly describe the distribution of
responses.
- Use Analyze—Compare Means—Means to obtain the means of each of V1, V2, and
V8, classified by fv.
Briefly describe the patterns of the means, that is, comment on how
those with different federal political preferences respond to the three
opinion variables. For one of the
opinion variables (V1, V2, or V8), obtain interval estimates of
the mean for the four categories of fv. You could do this by hand or by using Analyze—Descriptive Statistics—Explore. (Under Display, clicking on Statistics
eliminates the stem-and-leaf tables and, by clicking on the Statistics button in Explore, you can change the
confidence level). Briefly comment
on the results of these interval estimates.
- Obtain a table for each of the
opinion variables V1, V2, and V8, cross-classified by
fv. For each table, request
the chi-square statistic, along with the expected count. Describe your findings about the
relationships between federal political preference and each of the three
opinion variables. (To obtain the
cross-classification table and chi-square statistic, use Analyze—Descriptive
Statistics—Crosstabs. Using Statistics, check the Chi-square
box and using Cells, click on Observed and Expected).
- Use Analyze—Compare
Means—One-Sample T Test to obtain two tests of a mean. Test whether (a) the mean response of
undergraduates to statement V2 exceeds 3, and (b) the mean response
of undergraduates to statement V8 differs from 2. Describe the tests and the findings
from the tests.
- Write a short summary report on
what you find concerning the relationship between fv and the three
opinion variables. Comment on any
similarities or differences among the results of questions 1-4.
November
29, 2006