2. The Research Process

3. First, Collect data and make sure that everything is coded properly, things are not missing. Do this for whatever program your using (SPSS, EXCEL, etc.) If your using SPSS, its easy to check the data because you will run frequencies.

4. If anything looks odd, you can fix it, was everyone asked the question?

6. Next, run crosstabs and look for patterns..

7. Is the difference you see in sex and income significant or due to an error in the way you collected the sample? Determine the appropriate statistical tests to tell you this (refer to charts and examples in your text) Here we have sex which is nominal, but our dependent variable is on a scale. Why can’t you use correlation here?

8. Because… When one thing goes up, the other must go up (or down) Sex can’t go up (at least not in this example)

9. In this instance, we use an independent samples t test to compare the means of both group or ANOVA

10. Our results are not significant. We can’t show that any differences we see in income level are due to sex..but wait…could it be that we need to look at single males vs. single females?? Strange recode? Hmmm..the adventure continues..

11. Create the report