Because the GSS2016 doesn’t provide experimental data to work with, we’ll pause in our study of support for capital punishment and examine some relationships involving workplace variables such as some of those that were the focus of research reviewed in this chapter.

Do the features of work influence attitudes about the work experience? We can test some hypothetical answers to this question with the GSS2016 data set (although not within the context of an experimental design).

1. Describe the feelings of working Americans about their jobs and economic rewards, based on their responses to questions about balancing work and family demands, their satisfaction with their finances, and their job satisfaction. Generate the frequencies as follows:

a. Click Analyze/Descriptive statistics/Frequencies.
b. Select SATFIN, SATJOB.

How satisfied are working people with their jobs and their pay?

2. Do these feelings vary with work features?

a. Pose at least three hypotheses in which either SATFIN or SATJOB is the dependent variable and one of the following two variables is the independent variable: earnings or work status. Now test these hypotheses by comparing average scores on the attitudinal variables between categories of the independent variables:

i. Click Analyze/Compare Means/Means
ii. Select Dependent List: SATFIN, SATJOB
iii. Independent List: INCOMEFAM4, WRKSTAT

b. Which hypotheses appear to be supported? (Remember to review the distributions of the dependent variables [SATFIN, SATJOB] to remind yourself what a higher average score indicates on each variable.)