Assignment 1: Descriptive Statistics

Using either your own data set or the "gss 93 subset.sav" provided with SPSS (also distributed in class), explore the characteristics of at least three (3) variables utilizing appropriate tools and descriptive statistics in SPSS. If you are using your own data set, please have the instructor review the data set. If you are using your own data set, it is expected that prior to beginning the assignment, you will have imported the data file into SPSS, defined variables within SPSS, and have cleaned the dataset of obvious errors and miscodes. It is also expected that you have permission from the data owner to use the dataset for the purposes of the assignment.

1. Choose variables.
   The 3 (or more) variables you choose to work with for this assignment should have some plausible association or hypothesized relationship. For example, you might explore the variables 'education,' 'income' and 'happiness' or the variables 'age,' 'religious preference' and 'belief in life after death' in the "gss 93 subset.sav". If you are working on the assignment with partners, ensure that you do not choose all of the same variables as your partner(s).
2. Recode or Compute variable(s).
   Recode or compute at least one variable into a new variable. For example, the variable "Age" or "Highest year of School" in the "gss 93 subset.sav" could be recoded into a new variable with a number of categories. The recoding should be based on your initial review of the data. Produce frequencies for the input and output variables.
3. Produce descriptive statistics.

Once all cleaning and recoding is done, please report the following descriptive statistics:

1. For each of the variables, basic descriptive statistics appropriate to the level of measurement (e.g. mean, standard deviation), and a frequency table for each variable.
2. Explore the distribution of one variable by another. Your exploration of the data should include appropriate statistics and at least two graphs, such as a histogram, boxplot or scatterplot.
3. Pick two variables with the same level of measurement, and produce either a crosstable with meaningful percentages or a Pearson's \(r\).

4. For each section of your output, describe and interpret your results.

Discuss the results by inserting comments after each section or graph reflecting your understanding of the variables, why you chose the particular statistic or graph and any insights that the exploration uncovers.

Price: $17.01

Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 12 pages, 501 words.
Deliverable: Word Document