Social Studies 201
Winter 2004
Optional
problems for extra credit – Due April 21, 2004
If you
decide to answer all or part of the following problems, you can obtain up to
three (3) percentage points of extra credit toward your final grade. That is, whatever you obtain on these
problems (out of 3) will be added to the grade you would otherwise
receive. Answering some or all of these
problems cannot lower your grade, but could increase it.
The
following problems ask you to analyze the connection between the variable Future
– Economic Future and some attitude/opinion variables in the ssae98.sav
file located in folder t:\students\public\201. The Future variable asked respondents to assess whether,
in twenty years, they believed they would be better off, worse off, or at the
same economic level as their parents are now.
The following problems ask you to examine the relationship between
studeents’ assessment of their future and opinion variables V1, views on
free trade; V6, government helps business; and V8, user fees for
health care.
- Obtain
frequency distributions for the four variables Future, V1, V6, and
V8, along with means and standard deviations for the latter
three. Briefly describe.
- Use Analyze—Compare
Means—Means to obtain the means of each of V1, V6, and V8
by Future. Again, briefly
describe the patterns of the means, that is, comment on how those with
different evaluations of the future respond to the three opinion
variables.
- Obtain
a cross-classification of each of the opinion variables by Future. Request the chi-square statistic, along
with the expected count. Describe
your findings about the relationships between evaluations of the future
and the three opinion variables.
- Use Analyze—Compare
Means—Independent-Samples T Test to obtain two tests for a difference
of means of an opinion variable, categorized by values of Future. Using the information you obtained in
questions 2 and 3, for one test identify two categories of Future
where you expect there to be different mean values for one of the opinion
variables, and obtain the t-test for difference of two means. For the second test, do the same for
one set of means where you expect there is not a statistically significant
difference. Briefly describe your
findings.
- Write
a short summary report on what you found about the relationship between Future
and the three opinion variables.
Comment on any similarities or differences among the results of
questions 1-4.
April 5, 2004
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