Activity #1 (Group or Individual)

Create a table handout for your students. Have the students come up with a question that will result in nominal, mutually exclusive data (e.g., what is your biological sex). Then have the students calculate the expected and observed frequencies so that they can determine if what was observed is what would be expected (e.g., if males and females were equally represented in the classroom).

Activity #2 (Group or Individual)

Provide students with a list of chi-square and degrees of freedom values. Have students determine whether or not the values are statistically significant. This exercise is intended to help students use and master the chi-square appendix in the back of the book.

Activity #3 (Group or Individual)

Input the data from Activity #1 into SPSS, then distribute output tables from SPSS that contain bivariate tables and chi-square values. Have students work in small groups to practice interpreting data and discussing findings. This activity is aimed at getting students familiar with reading SPSS output.

Activity #4 (Group or Individual)

Have students create three kinds of bivariate tables in SPSS: (1) a 2x2 nominal table; (2) a 2x3, 3x3, or 2x4 nominal table; and (3) a 2x3 or 2x4+ ordinal table. Ask students to interpret chi-square, discuss relationships that do or do not exist in the bivariate table, and interpret the various measures of association.