SPSS Exercises

[GSS10SSDS and MTF11SSDS]

1. The GSS data set includes responses to questions about the respondent’s general happiness (HAPPY) and his or her subjective class identification (CLASS). Analyze the relationship between responses to these two questions with the SPSS Crosstabs procedure, requesting counts and appropriate cell percentages. (Click on Analyze, Descriptive Statistics, and Crosstabs to get started.)

  1. What percentage of working-class people responded that they were “very happy”?
  2. What percentage of lower-class people were “very happy”?
  3. What percentage of those who were “pretty happy” were also from the middle and upper classes?
  4. Most of the people who said that they were “very happy” were from which two classes?
  5. Is there a relationship between perceived class and perceived happiness? If there is a rela­tionship, describe it. Is it strong or weak? (Hint: Use perceived class as the independent variable.)
  6. Rerun your analysis, this time adding RACECEN1 as a control variable. Is there a difference in the relationship between perceived class and happiness for whites and blacks in the sample? (Because of the large number of racial categories, just compare blacks and whites.)

2. Analyze the relationship between self-reported health condition and general happiness.

  1. Use SPSS to construct a table showing the relationship between health condition (HEALTH) and reported general happiness (HAPPY). (Hint: Use HEALTH as the dependent variable.) Next, use SPSS to construct tables showing the same relationship controlling for sex.
  2. Overall, are women or men more likely to report “excellent” health?
  3. Do women and men with higher levels of happiness report poor or excellent health? Is there a relationship between happiness and health? Make sure to support your answer with data from your cross-tabulation.

3. Is there a difference in attitudes about abortion depending on the circumstance of the woman’s pregnancy or her reason for an abortion? Separately assess the relationship between SEX and two abortion items, ABPOOR (Should a woman have an abortion if she can’t afford any more children?) and ABHLTH (Should a woman have an abortion if her health is seriously endangered?). What do you conclude?

4. For the GSS2010, respondents were asked to report which candidate they voted for in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections (PRES04 and PRES08) and their feelings about the Bible (BIBLE). Does a relationship exist between a respondent’s 2008 vote and her or his feelings about the Bible? For example, if someone thinks that the Bible is a “book of fables,” did the individual vote for Senator John Kerry or President George W. Bush in 2004? If the respondent believes the Bible is the word of God, how did the respondent vote in 2004 or 2008?

  1. Which variable should be defined as the dependent variable? Explain your answer.
  2. Using SPSS Crosstabs, create two tables with BIBLE and each of the PRES variables. Explain the relationship between the two variables for 2004 and 2008. (Remember, when you discuss your findings, you should exclude those respondents who did not vote.)
  3. Examine the relationship between BIBLE and one of the PRES variables with a control variable of your choice.

5. Based on the MTF11SSD, examine the relationship between a teen’s race (RACE) and the num­ber of friends who drink alcohol (FRDRINK) and smoke cigarettes (FRSMOKE). Using SPSS Crosstabs, create two tables with RACE and each friend variable. What is the relationship between these variables?

[GSS10SSDS and MTF11SSDS]

6. The GSS 2010 contains a series of questions about the role of women at home and at work. It is very likely that the responses to these questions vary by sex—or do they?

  1. Use SPSS to investigate the relationship between SEX and FECHLD (a working mother does not hurt her children). Create a bivariate table and ask for appropriate percentages and expected values. Does the table have a large number of cells with expected values less than 5? Are there any surprises in the data?
  2. Have SPSS calculate chi-square for the table.
  3. Test the null hypothesis at the .05 significance level. What do you conclude?
  4. Select another demographic variable (DEGREE or CLASS) and investigate its relationship with (FECHLD).

7. Is it better for a man to work and a woman to stay at home? Women and men were asked this question in the GSS 2010. Investigate the relationship between marital status (MARITAL) and responses to this question (FEFAM). Have SPSS calculate the cross-tabulation of both variables, along with chi-square (set alpha at .05). What can you conclude?

8. The MTF data set includes teens’ attitudes toward different types of drug use—alcohol (ATDRINK), marijuana (ATWEED), and cigarettes (ATSMOKE). Create bivariate tables with these drug variables, along with demographic variables such as sex, race, or age. Have SPSS calculate the appropriate per­centages and chi-squares (set alpha at .05). What relationship exists between your selected demo­graphic variable and attitudes toward trying these drugs?

9. Use GSS 2010 to examine the relationship between respondent’s health (HEALTH) and social class (CLASS). Treat social class as the independent variable.

  1.  Request the appropriate measures of associations to describe the relationship.
  2. Add SEX as a control variable and calculate the association measure for each partial table. Is the relationship stronger for women or men? Can you think of reasons why this might be so?
  3. What other control variables may be appropriate? Continue to examine the relationship between HEALTH and CLASS with one additional control variable.

10. Investigate the relationship between the abortion attitudes in GSS 2010 (e.g., ABANY) and various demographic variables (you might begin with gender, age, or race). Examine the relationship of these variables based on the appropriate measures of association. For example, you might examine whether attitude toward each of the abortion items has a similar relationship to gender. That is, if females are supportive of abortion for rape victims, are they also supportive of abortion in other circumstances? Try exploring these relationships further by adding control variables. You might create tables of abor­tion attitude by race and by gender. When you have finished the analysis, write a short report sum­marizing the findings. Suggest possible causes for the relationships you found.