Assignment Two

Wayne State University

Michelle Orzel
SW 7810- Mickey Sperlich

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Introduction This assignment was designed to assess the ability to compute and interpret descriptive and inferential statistical analyses using SPSS. For this assignment, I worked in a group of three to answer three research questions we posed based on interesting variables from the General Social Survey 2008. Jennifer Fye, Mary Murray and I worked together and conducted three different statistical tests in order to test the hypotheses that we determined in order to compare the variables of interest to us. The results of our statistical analysis were quite interesting. Our first research question compares two ratio level variables from the General Social Survey 2008: The respondents income level and the number of hours the respondent usually worked in a week. We asked What is the relationship between income and reported number of hours worked in a week? The reason we were curious of this result was because it stands to reason that the more you work each week, the more money you should make. However, we know that sometimes income is not distributed equally based on how much or how hard you work; therefore, we wanted to know how well this worked out for the respondents of the survey. Our second research question compares two nominal level variables from the General Social Survey 2008: Race of the respondent and the political party affiliation of the respondent. We asked What is the relationship between race and political party affiliation? We were all very curious to see the results of this statistical test! This year we are beginning to look more closely at politics because it is a big part of social work. This question not only involves politics itself, but also tests to see how the different racial groups affiliate themselves with politics, which is an important thing to know when it comes to social work.

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Our final research question compared a nominal level variable with a ratio level variable from the General Social Survey 2008: Respondents sex and the amount of time the respondent spends on leisure activities. We asked What is the relationship between the respondents sex and time spent on leisure? This question was interesting to us because the things we hear from the media are always skewed one way or another. We hear things about women being all about work now, stay at home moms/dads, workaholic men, and lazy men or lazy women. By looking at the results of a statistical test done to compare sex with leisure time, we would finally be able to get some good information on the topic that is not skewed by the media at all. Descriptive Statistics For the first set of variable we wanted to compare, both ratio level, we needed to find the descriptive statistics before we could perform the Persons r correlation test. We wanted to find out the relationship between the respondents level of income and how many hours the respondent reported working in a week. We found the mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis for each variable and proceeded to look at several graphs to see this information. For the level of income, we found that the mean was 10.46, the standard deviation was 2.920, and both the skewness and kurtosis were outside normal ranges. The "rincome" variable is leptokurtic (6.300) and is negatively skewed (-2.561). As for the hours of work in a week, hrs2, we found the mean was 39.29, the standard deviation was 12.994, and it appears it is slightly leptokurtic (1.312) with a negative skew (-.684). This information can all be seen in Table 1 below.

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Table 1: Descriptive Statistics for Income and Hours Usually Worked a Week Descriptive Statistics N Statistic Respondents Income Number of hours usually work a week Valid N 76 2235 87 10.46 39.29 2.920 12.994 Mean Standard Deviation

For this set of information, we believe it can be considered representative to the population. We found that the more hours a person works, the more their income is. This is generally a true statement for most people, although there are some outliers. If we were to generalize this information to the larger population, we believe that the results would come up quite similar to those that we found in this survey. Some populations that this information may not be so easily generalizable to would include those in another country, because we are unaware how those systems may work, and perhaps those populations that have higher ups work a lot less than the little people but make a lot more money than them. There are some companies that do that and for those companies, this analysis would not be generalizable to them. For the second set of variables, both nominal level, we wanted to compare, we needed to find the descriptive statistics before performing the chi-square statistical test. We found the frequencies for the three categories of race represented in the survey, as well as the 8 different political party affiliation options in the survey. For the race question, there was no missing data.

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Of the 3,559 respondents to the survey, only 18 did not provide a response to the party affiliation question. We found that over three quarters of the respondents to the survey were Caucasian, 77% or 2,767. Another 13.8% were African American and the final 8.5% were classified as other. As for political party affiliation, as you can see in Table 2 below, there is no clear cut majority. Although when it comes to some degree of democratic affiliation (strong, not strong, or independent near the democratic side), a total of 48.5% of the respondents are represented there. Then there was the response option of being completely independent with no lean one way or the other, which was represented by 15.6% of the survey respondents. A total of 33.7% of the respondents selected one of the options towards the republican side (strong, not strong, or independent near the republican side). There are other options outside of democratic and republican though, but these parties were grouped together to form one category, other party and only 1.8% of respondents are affiliated with another party. The final .5% of the respondents did not provide an answer. Table 2: Frequencies of Political Party Affiliation Frequency Valid STRONG DEMOCRAT NOT STR DEMOCRAT IND,NEAR DEM INDEPENDENT IND,NEAR REP NOT STR REPUBLICAN STRONG REPUBLICAN OTHER PARTY Total NA Total 676 609 440 554 301 512 385 64 3541 18 3559 Percent 19.0 17.1 12.4 15.6 8.5 14.4 10.8 1.8 99.5 .5 100.0

Missing

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For this information, we believe that it cannot completely be considered representative of the entire population. This is because three quarters of the population is not considered Caucasian, way more of the population would be considered African American, and other is not representative of or specific enough to all the other racial categories. This information, although important to the survey and still informative for its uses, is not representative of the larger population of the United States. Although the sample cannot be considered completely representative, it can, to some degree, be generalized to the larger population. This is because, with this research question, political party affiliation is often associated with race lines. So although the sample itself is not perfectly representative to the larger population, we can safely make some assumptions in regards to the association of race with political party affiliation. The last set of variables we needed to get the descriptive statistics for were necessary to do our t-test. We first found the frequencies for the nominal variable of sex of the respondent. We then found the mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis information for the ratio level variable of time the respondent spends on leisure. The frequencies for the sex of the respondent came back with no missing data. There were 44.1% male respondents and 55.9% female respondents in this survey. The descriptive statistics for leisure time, as represented by the data in Table 3 below, show a mean of 2.2 and a standard deviation of .945. The skewness of this variable came out to be .842 with a kurtosis of 1.74, both in the normal range.

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Table 3: Descriptive Statistics on Leisure Time of the Respondent N Statistic Time Respondent Would Spend on Leisure Valid N 1530 1530 Mean 2.20 Standard Deviation .945

After conducting the analysis of these two variables, sex of the respondent and the amount of time spent on leisure, we believe that the information could be considered representative of the larger population. This is a fairly generalizable statistic that would not be specific for one population or another. We believe that only populations this information would not be generalizable to would be those populations where women are not allowed to work and would therefore have much more time for leisure activities. Bivariate Analysis The first research question we are testing is what is the relationship between income and hours worked in a week? The null hypothesis for this question is that there is no relationship between income and reported number of hours worked in a week. Our alternative hypothesis for this is that there is a relationship between income and number of hours worked in a week. In order to find the results of this question, we needed to perform a Pearsons r correlation test. In order to reject the null hypothesis, we determined the significance level needed would be set at .05. The Independent variable of this hypothesis is the respondents income, while the dependent variable is the number of hours worked in a week.

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After conducting our Pearsons r correlation test, we found that there is a significant positive correlation between a persons income and the number of hours they work in a week (.362). We found that the results were significant at less than .01. This is very meaningful because our level of statistical significance was established beforehand and needed to be less than .05 and the results ended up being less than .01. This shows that the results of our test are significantly correlated in a positive way. The more hours a person works in a week, the higher their income is going to be. The results of this test can be shown like this: r= .362 r= .131 p <0.01. The results of this test are shown in Table 4 below.

Table 4: Pearsons r Correlation Test Between Income and Number of Hours Worked

Correlations HOURS USUALLY WORK A WEEK HOURS USUALLY WORK A WEEK Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N Pearson Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N 1 RESPONDENTS INCOME

.362** .001 76 1

RESPONDENTS INCOME

87 .362** .001 76

2235

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

The second research question we are testing is what is the relationship between race and political party affiliation? The null hypothesis for this question is that there is no relationship between race and political party affiliation. Our alternative hypothesis for this is that there is a

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relationship between race and political party affiliation. In order to find the results of this question, we needed to perform a Chi-Square test. In order to reject the null hypothesis, we determined the significance level needed would be set at .05. The Independent variable of this hypothesis is the respondents race, while the dependent variable is the political party affiliation. After conducting our Chi-Square test on the two variables, we found a significant relationship between the respondents race and their political party affiliation. We are able to reject our null hypothesis because we found our alternative hypothesis to be supported at a statistical significance level of less than .01. These results, as shown in Table 5 below, could be summarized in the following way: x =433.598, df=14, p<.001. This means that the race of the respondent directly affected the political party that the respondent was associated with. We found that African American were significantly more likely to associate with the Democratic Party. We also found that Caucasians were spread pretty evenly across the board and did not have a dominant party to be associated with.

Table 5: Chi-Square Test for Race and Political Party Affiliation

Chi-Square Tests Value df

Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square

433.598a

14

.000

N of Valid Cases

3541

0 cells (0.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 5.37.

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The final research question we are testing is what is the relationship between sex and time the respondent spends on leisure? The null hypothesis for this question is that there is no relationship between sex and time spent of leisure. Our alternative hypothesis for this is that there is a relationship between sex and time spent on leisure. In order to find the results of this question, we needed to perform a t-test. In order to reject the null hypothesis, we determined the significance level needed would be set at .05. The Independent variable of this hypothesis is the respondents sex, while the dependent variable is the amount of time the respondent spends on leisure. After conducting our t-test on the two variables in question, we found no relationship between the sex of the respondent and the amount of time spent on leisure. Our alternative hypothesis that there would be a relationship between the two variables is not correct because we did not find a statistically significant relationship from our t-test. The Levenes statistic is not statistically significant, this is the test for homogeneity, and therefore, we can look at the first line of output in our data in the row for equal variances assumed, as shown in Table 6 below. We can report the results of this test as follows: t=-.257, df = 1528, p = .797.

Table 6: T-Test for Sex of the Respondent and Time Spent on Leisure

Levenes Test for Equality of Variances F Sig. t

t-test for Equality of Means

df

Sig. (2tailed)

Time R Would Spend on Leisure

Equal Variances Assumed

.653

.419

-.257

1528

.797

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Implications In doing our research, we found a few implications that could be helpful in the field of social work practice. Our first research question was in regards to a persons income and how many hours they work in a week. This information could be helpful when discussing the importance of going to work, getting the hours, and being able to afford the necessities of life with our clients. When someone begins to complain about how much they are working or even that they dont want to work, we can bring of these statistics in order to help convince them of the importance of working. This information may be specifically important for at-risk, disenfranchised populations because it is within these populations that these assertions are typically made. By using these finding, further research can be done to help determine how many hours it would be necessary to obtain an income high enough to sustain a life at the very minimum, and then at a level of more comfort. Our next research question also has some implications for social work practice. We looked at the relationship between race and political party affiliation. With this new information in our hands, we are now better able to research the issues and typical opinions on these issues based on the political party affiliation and what particular racial group we will be working with. This way we will be able to better connect and communicate with our clients on the issues that matter most to them and have a general idea of how they feel about these issues. The results showed a clear distinction for African Americans and their preference for the Democratic Party. This information will help us in working with at-risk, disenfranchised, and culturally diverse populations because it is these groups that are mostly African American or another minority race. Further research can be done in this area in order to look more closely at the specific issues that

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are important to the individual parties. We could help to line up more specific opinions with the issues and make sure our assumptions would be accurate with the party and not just a general party follower. Our last research question showed the relationship between sex and the amount of time spent on leisure activity. We were unable to support our hypothesis, and therefore our results will be not useful in social work practice. There was no relationship between these two variables. However, if further research in this area were to be done, we could find a connection perhaps with our first research question. If we could see how much time was spent on leisure activities in relation with income, then perhaps we can help to explain further the importance of work and play to our clients.