Spring, 2004 (Roos, Soc. 311)
Assignment 6: Frequencies on Final Project Variables
Due: Thursday, April 29th
This assignment will move you a little farther along on your final project. You'll be accessing the General Social Survey online for this assignment, and your final project. Because you can complete this assignment from any computer, we will not need to go to the IML. For the current assignment:
1) Make sure you have your three variables from the GSS (the ones you used for Assignment 4). If you want to choose new variables, go back to the GSS website (see Ass. 1). But if you do this, make sure you check with one of us to make sure your variables are okay for the final project.
2) Describe your variables: which is your independent variable, your dependent variable, your test variable (and will your test variable be antecedent or intervening)? State your research hypothesis. So far, this just duplicates what you've already done for Assignment 4.
3) Describe how you will recode your three variables (if necessary). We will talk in class about how to do this. For example, if one of your variables is "years of school completed", you will need to recode your 20 education values (where 1 = one year of schooling, 2 = two years of schooling, up to 20 means 8 years or more of college) into approximately three or four recoded groups (i.e., grammar school or less, some high school, high school degree, etc.). In general, to avoid running out of cases you should have no more than two to three categories for each of your independent and test variables. You can leave more categories for your dependent variable.
4) Make sure the missing values the GSS has assigned are acceptable to you. For example, Don't know (DK) and No answer (NA) responses should in most circumstances be assigned as missing, which would eliminate them from your analyses. In some cases, you may want to code "don't know" responses as a valid code (for example, if a lot of people answer DK).
5) To complete this assignment, you will use the 2002 General Social Survey data (or, 2000, depending on data availability). Use the GSS web page to generate univariate frequencies for each of your three variables. If you recode, get frequencies for both the unrecoded and recoded versions of your variables.
Hint: from the GSS site, click ANALYZE, then "Frequencies or crosstabluation"
For univariate frequences: put names of three variables in "row"
For "selection filter," include the year you are using "year(2000)"
To recode (for example, education): "educ(r:1=0-11; 2=12; 3=13-15; 4=16-20)"
Click on: "Help: General/Recoding Variables" for additional assistance.
6) To check your work, look over your output. You should have three basic tables, one for each of your variables (more if you recode variables). Before you get too excited, however, closely peruse your output. Make sure you didn't make any logical errors. Go back to the GSS website to compare your unrecoded frequencies with the 2002 (or 2000) frequencies.
7) Use the data from the computer printout to make typed versions of your univariate tables for each of your recoded variables (through Word, or Excel). Label them sequentially Tables 1 through 3.
Also, use the data to make relative frequency histograms for each of your recoded variables. Label them sequentially Figures 1 through 3. If you know how to use Excel, you can produce nice looking histograms. Or, just draw them by hand. I'll talk about this in class, but in the interim, play around with inputting your data into Excel to produce various kinds of histograms.
8) Use these data to write up your results for the recoded variables only. In discussing your results tell us, for example, what percentage of the sample is male, what percentage is female (for example, if sex is one of your variables). This last part of the assignment asks you to interpret your output, and to practice writing about it.
[Note: this frequencies output will not yet allow you to test your research hypothesis; rather, it will simply give you percentage distributions for each of your three variables. Your next task (for the final project) will be to actually test your hypothesis, by generating bivariate and trivariate tables.]
HERE IS A LIST OF WHAT YOU NEED TO TURN IN:
1) COPIES OF THE PAGES YOU PRINTED FROM THE GSS CODEBOOK
FOR ALL THREE VARIABLES.
2) GSS-PRODUCED UNIVARIATE FREQUENCIES FOR EACH OF YOUR THREE VARIABLES (BOTH
UNRECODED AND RECODED).
3) EXCEL-PRODUCED (OR BY HAND) TABLES FOR EACH OF YOUR THREE VARIABLES (RECODED
ONLY).
4) EXCEL-PRODUCED (OR BY HAND) HISTOGRAMS FOR EACH OF YOUR THREE VARIABLES (RECODED
ONLY).
5) WRITEUP OF YOUR METHODS AND RESULTS (SEE POINTS 1, 2, 3, & 8).
Remember, computing is fun! YOUR ASSIGNMENT MUST BE TYPED.