Investigating the Social World
SPSS Exercises
1. Neighborhood and school integration has often been a focus of government social policy. Does the racial composition of a neighborhood have any association with attitudes related to racial issues? Although we cannot examine the effects of social policies or programs directly in the General Social Survey (GSS) data, we can consider the association between neighborhood racial composition and attitudes related to race. The variable RACLIVE indicates whether the respondent lives in a racially integrated neighborhood. Request its frequency distribution as well as those for several attitudes related to race: RACOPEN, AFFRMACT, WRKWAYUP, HELPBLK, and CLOSEBLK3.
2. Do attitudes vary with the experience of living in a racially integrated neighborhood? Request the cross-tabulation of the variables used in Step 1, RACOPEN to CLOSEBLK3 by RACLIVE (request percentages on the column totals). Read the tables and explain what they tell us about attitudes and neighborhoods. Does the apparent effect of racial integration vary with the different attitudes? How would you explain this variation in these “multiple outcomes”?
3. What other attitudes differ between whites who live in integrated and segregated neighborhoods? Review the GSS2016 or GSS2016x variable list to identify some possibilities and request cross-tabulations for these variables. Do you think these differences are more likely to be a consequence of a racially integrated neighborhood experience or a cause of the type of neighborhood that people choose to live in? Explain.