This assessed piece of work asks you to choose and then analyse data from ONE of TWO data sets: world.sav and political.sav. Both data sets are available on the course MOLE website.

In marking the project, particular attention will be focused on:

1. The clarity of the research design. This comprises the identification of your research hypotheses and your choice of the data required to test these.
2. Your choice of appropriate methods of analysis to investigate the research hypotheses.
3. The rigour of the manner in which the analyses have been conducted. For example, doing any necessary checks of assumptions and taking follow up steps if and where appropriate.
4. The clarity with which any patterns or trends in the data are identified and presented.
5. The clarity with which conclusions are drawn from the results of the statistical analyses.

For your chosen data set, choose three or four variables you wish to work with. Using these variables you will undertake a multiple regression analysis.

Having conducted the analysis, you should write a report of NO MORE than three pages (using 12 point Times New Roman at 1.5 line spacing and one inch margins all round). Your submission for assessment should include in addition to the three page report:

1. A set of descriptive statistics for your chosen three or four variables. Use Analyse > Descriptive Statistics > Statistics to do this in SPSS, and then record the mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values.
2. Carefully selected print outs of relevant parts of your SPSS sessions. These should only illustrate your report. We need to know that you have correctly interpreted any Output; the Output is not a substitute for your analysis and interpretation.

Getting Started

Decide which of the two data sets (described below) you wish to use, and then choose three or four variables from the data set. You should read the rubric for each data set carefully before selecting your variables. Once you have chosen your variables, start SPSS and retrieve the relevant data.

Take a random sample of 75 observations (cases) from Data Set 1 (world.sav) if that is your chosen data set, or a random sample of 100 observations if data set 2 (political.sav) is your chosen data set.

This can be done by using the following SPSS procedure:

Data > Select Cases > 'Random Sample of Cases (you should also tick the box saying 'Unselected cases are deleted' at this point) > Sample > 'Exactly 75 cases out of 132' (e.g. for data set 1).

NB: This procedure will automatically wipe the observations not selected. You should therefore at this point save the new (sampled) data file as a new file and carefully retain the original file of data intact as a file of its own.

Price: $9.22

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 6 pages, 322 words and 8 charts.
Deliverable: Word Document