Social Science Data Analysis
Exam Solutions
Course Introduction
Social Science Data Analysis introduces students to the quantitative methods and tools used to analyze data in the social sciences. The course covers the principles of data collection, cleaning, and management, as well as statistical techniques for exploring social trends, patterns, and relationships. Students gain hands-on experience with statistical software to conduct descriptive and inferential analyses, interpret results, and effectively communicate findings. Through real-world examples and research projects, the course emphasizes critical thinking, ethical considerations, and the application of data analysis in disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics, and psychology.
Recommended Textbook
Answering Questions With Statistics 1st Edition by Robert F. Szafran
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Chapter 1: Introduction
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Sample Questions
Q1) A critic charges that IQ tests don't really measure what they claim to measure. They say they measure natural intelligence but they really measure knowledge of the dominant culture of a society. This critic is claiming IQ tests lack A) authenticity
B) parsimony
C) reliability
D) validity
Answer: D
Q2) What are the differences between independent, dependent, and control variables?
Answer: The independent variable influences or affects the dependent variable; the dependent variable is influenced or affected by the independent variable. Control variables are other variables which could influence the dependent variable but their effect is eliminated or separated out in order to better reveal the independent variable's effect on the dependent variable.
Q3) What is the difference between reliability and validity?
Answer: Reliability refers to consistency of measurement whereas validity refers to the match between the operational and theoretical definitions.
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3
Chapter 2: Data Sets
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following SPSS procedures would show you the values each case has on one or more variables?
A) Case Summaries
B) Display Data File Information
C) Frequencies
Answer: A
Q2) You have a numeric variable that records the number of college credits a person has earned. You want to create a user-defined missing value for person's whose college records were unavailable. Which of the following would be the best user-defined missing value to use?
A) 1
B) 0
C) 99
D) 250
Answer: A
Q3) Since they play no part in statistical analysis, of what use are variable labels and value labels?
Answer: They tell/remind persons using the data file or the output what the variable names and attribute codes represent
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Frequency Tables and Univariate Charts
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Sample Questions
Q1) You have a frequency table for the variable religious affiliation. You want to know for which religions you have 10 or more members in your data set. Which column in a frequency table should you use?
A) frequency
B) percent
C) valid percent
D) cumulative percent
Answer: A
Q2) Answer the question that follows this SPSS output
This histogram presents data for the variable "number of siblings." The first bin represents persons with
A) 0 siblings
B) 1 siblings
C) 0 or 1 siblings
D) 0, 1, or 2 siblings
(Note: * indicates
Answer: C
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Chapter 4: Central Tendency and Dispersion
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Sample Questions
Q1) Five college students have the following number of TV shows they watch regularly: 0, 0, 3, 4, 8. Compute the following statistics based on these values:mean: _____ median: _____ mode: _____ range: _____ minimum: _____ 50<sup>th</sup> percentile: _____
Q2) An interval/ratio variable has a variance of 100. What is the value of the standard deviation?
standard deviation = __________
Q3) Answer the question that follows this SPSS output: What is the mode? _______________
Q4) Answer the question that follows this SPSS output: What is the mode? _______________
Q5) Six college students have the following number of TV shows they watch regularly: 0, 1, 3, 3, 5, 6. Compute the following statistics based on these values:mean: _____ median: _____ mode: _____ range: _____ minimum: _____ maximum: _____
Q6) You want to see the mean, standard deviation, minimum, and maximum for a variable. Name one SPSS procedure that would give you this.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Creating New Variables
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Sample Questions
Q1) A variable has a mean of 1000 and a standard deviation of 200. All 500 values for this variable are converted into z-scores. What is now the value of the mean? What is now the value of the standard deviation?
A) mean: __________
B) standard deviation: __________
Q2) To combine categories of a variable so that you end up with a variable with fewer categories, you would use which SPSS procedure?
A) Recode
B) Scale
C) Select Cases
D) Split File
Q3) How can missing data be handled when constructing an index?
Q4) A variable has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 10. Calculate the Z-scores for the first two cases and the raw scores for the last two cases.
Q5) Why are z-scores useful?
Q6) When would you use Select Cases and when would you use Split File?
Q7) What are the two most common reasons for recoding a variable?
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Comparing Group Means
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Sample Questions
Q1) What does layering independent variables do?
Q2) In the Means procedure, the lowest level of measurement that the independent variable (the variable that is used to create the groups) can be is
A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval/ratio
Q3) Based on the following output, which conclusion is correct?
A) For every group, women averaged more TVHOURS than men.
B) For every group, there was more variability among women than men on TVHOURS.
C) For every group, there were more women than men.
D) No group averaged more than 3.50 TVHOURS.
Q4) A(n) _____ is when the size and/or direction of one independent variable's effect on the dependent variable varies depending on the value of one or more other independent variables.
A) asymmetry
B) correlation
C) interaction effect
D) main effect
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Chapter 7: Crosstab Tables
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Sample Questions
Q1) How can you use column percents to identify the median?
Q2) In the following Crosstabs, what is the modal class of persons currently married?
A) lower class
B) working class
C) 48.7%
D) 45.5%
Q3) The following Crosstab supports which conclusion about the cases in the data set?
A) Of those who have no religion, 3.6% are liberals.
B) The median level of attachment to a religion for moderates is strong.
C) Of the three political orientations, conservatives are the most likely to report a strong attachment to a religion.
D) The most common level of attachment to a religion for conservatives was strong.
Q4) What is the difference between a column percent and a row percent?
Q5) What kinds of questions can you answer using a crosstab table?
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Chapter 8: Nominal and Ordinal Measures of Association
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is an ordinal measure of association?
A) Cramer's V
B) Kendall's tau-b
C) lambda
D) uncertainty coefficient
Q2) If Betty and Ann form a discordant pair on the variables 1<sup>st</sup> exam grade and 2<sup>nd</sup> exam grade, then
A) one of them got the better grade on both exams
B) one of them got the better grade on the 1<sup>st</sup> exam but the other got the better grade on the 2<sup>nd</sup> exam
C) they both got the same grade on one of the exams
D) one of them got the same grade on both exams
Q3) Which of the following measures of association does NOT indicate the direction of a relationship?
A) Cramer's V
B) Pearson's r
C) Somers' d
D) tau-b
Q4) What are the names of two nominal measures of association?
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Chapter 9: Pearsons Correlation and Bivariate Regression
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Sample Questions
Q1) GPA is regressed on YEAR in college. The resulting regression equation is GPA = 1.75 + .25(YEAR). Someone in their fourth year of college would be predicted to have a GPA _____ than someone in their first year of college.
A) 2.00 lower
B) 0.25 lower
C) 0.75 higher
D) 1.50 higher
Q2) What kinds of questions can you answer using a correlation coefficient?
Q3) If R<sup>2</sup> for a regression equation is .30, how much of the variability in the dependent variable is NOT accounted for by the independent variables? __________
Q4) Years of schooling (EDUC) is regressed on number of SIBLINGS. The resulting regression equation is EDUC = 16 1.00(SIBLINGS). Someone with three siblings would be predicted to get how many years of schooling?
A) 13
B) 15
C) 16
D) 17
Q5) What information does a regression residual provide?
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Chapter 10: Multiple Regression
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Sample Questions
Q1) If you want to see the net effect of gender on academic achievement after controlling for age and parents' social class, what is an appropriate statistical technique to use?
A) Bivariate Correlation
B) Compute
C) Frequencies
D) Linear Regression
Q2) Which of the following statements is correct?
A) Standardized regression coefficients (betas) indicate the direction of a relationship.
B) A nominal variable with three or more categories can be the dependent variable in regression.
C) Both "a" and "b" are correct.
D) None of the above is correct.
Q3) What information does a standardized coefficient provide?
Q4) In the context of regression analysis, each of the following has at least one other name. State at least one of those other names:
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Page 12
Chapter 11: Sampling Distributions and Normal Distributions
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is correct?
A) As the sample size increases, the standard error decreases.
B) Standard errors of sampling distributions can be calculated from the results of non-probability samples.
C) Both "a" and "b" are correct.
D) None of the above is correct.
Q2) What kinds of questions can you answer using the properties of sampling distributions and normal distributions?
Q3) A researcher takes a sample of 500 employed college graduates and asks them how long it took them to find a job after college. In the sample the average length of time was 65 days. Our researcher estimates the value of the standard error to be 5 days. Complete the following statements:
A) The sample result was __________ with a margin of error of ___________ and a level of confidence of 68 percent.
B) I am 95 percent sure that the true average # of days to find a job after college is between __________ and __________.
Q4) What are confidence intervals, confidence levels, and margins of error?
Q5) What does the central limit theorem say about sampling distributions?
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Chapter 12: Hypothesis Testing and One-Sample T Tests
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the difference between a two-tailed hypothesis test and a one-tailed hypothesis test?
Q2) Which of the following is a null hypothesis?
A) Average temperature is 72 degrees.
B) Average temperature is less than 72 degrees.
C) Average temperature is more than 72 degrees.
D) Average temperature is not 72 degrees.
Q3) Which hypothesis gets tested in hypothesis testing?
A) alternative hypothesis
B) null hypothesis
C) research hypothesis
D) scientific hypothesis
Q4) The research hypothesis is "average length of employment is less than 2 years."
What is the correct companion null hypothesis?
A) Average length of employment is 2 years
B) Average length of employment is more than 2 years
C) Average length of employment is 2 years or less.
D) Average length of employment is 2 years or more.
Q5) What are the four steps in hypothesis testing?
Q6) When can results be described as "statistically significant"?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Paired and Independent-Samples T Tests
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why are independent samples called that?
Q2) What is the largest risk of making a Type I error that social scientists will usually take?
A) 5% chance
B) 68% chance
C) 95% chance
D) 99.7% chance
Q3) Which would be an appropriate statistical procedure to test the hypothesis that Americans listen to radio an average of 200 minutes a day?
A) independent-samples t test
B) one-sample t test
C) paired-samples t test
Q4) A researcher has done a paired-samples t-test. She reports the test's degrees of freedom to be 100. How many cases were there in the sample? __________
Q5) Does statistical significance indicate substantive importance? Explain.
Q6) What kinds of questions can you answer using an independent-samples t test?
Q7) When does a researcher risk making a Type I error?
Q8) Why are paired samples called that?
Q9) What kinds of questions can you answer using a paired-samples t test?
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Chapter 14: Analysis of Variance
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Q1) You are doing a one-way ANOVA. Your sample size is 1,000. Your factor (independent) variable has four categories. How many degrees of freedom will your F-ratio have? __________ and __________ degrees of freedom
Q2) You are doing a one-way ANOVA. Your sample size is 500. Your factor (independent) variable has six categories. How many degrees of freedom will your F-ratio have? __________ and __________ degrees of freedom
Q3) Describe the interaction effect shown in this plot.
Q4) An author reports the following information about a one-way ANOVA: F = 0.95, df = 3 and 48, p = .231. Which of the following is true?
A) There were 3 groups being compared.
B) The null hypothesis was rejected
C) The sample results were not significant.
D) The post hoc multiple comparisons should be examined.
Q5) Does the one-way ANOVA research hypothesis claim that in the population, every group's mean differs from every other group's mean? Explain.
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Page 16
Chapter 15: Chi-Square
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Sample Questions
Q1) What does a positive residual in a crosstab cell mean?
A) The two variables are negatively associated.
B) There were more cases with that combination of traits than expected.
C) There were fewer cases with that combination of traits than expected.
D) You should not reject the null hypothesis.
Q2) What is the lowest level of measurement that can be used for the two variables in a chi-square analysis?
A) nominal
B) ordinal
C) interval/ratio
Q3) If religious affiliation and political party affiliation are independent, then
A) The probability of being a Democrat is the same for Protestants, for Catholics, and for Jews.
B) The probability of being Protestant is the same as the probability of being Catholic which is the same as the probability of being Jewish.
C) The probability of being Democrat is the same as the probability of being Independent which is the same as the probability of being Republican.
D) All of the above.
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Chapter 16: Hypothesis Testing With Measures of
Association and Regression
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Sample Questions
Q1) Before checking the significance levels of the net effects of the independent variables in a multiple regression, the significance of what should be checked?
Q2) Are weak associations between variables always nonsignificant? Are strong associations always significant?
Q3) Which SPSS procedure would you use to answer the question "Is there a significant difference between the average national population growth rates of South American and North American countries?"
A) Bivariate Correlation
B) Independent-Sample T Test
C) Linear Regression
D) One-way ANOVA
Q4) Which SPSS procedure would you use to answer the question "Does a nation's level of economic development have a significant negative net effect on its population growth rate after controlling for climate and religion?"
A) Bivariate Correlation
B) Independent-Sample T Test
C) Linear Regression
D) One-way ANOVA
18
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