1. SOCI332- Statistics for Social Science
Module 1
SOCI332- Statistics for Social Science

2. Introduction
Social research utilizes the scientific method to collect and analyze data to determine what phenomena and dynamics are related to others. We look to study the relationships between two or more variables, how strong those relationships are, and whether they can be applied to the population they were drawn from.
SPSS is a widely used statistical software program
Created and maintained by IBM
Data sets are to SPSS as word documents are to Word.

3. What is Statistics?
A branch of mathematics that focuses on the organization, analysis, and interpretation of a group of numbers
Two Main Branches of Statistics
descriptive statistics:
used to summarize and describe a group of numbers from a research study
inferential statistics:
procedures for drawing conclusions based on the scores collected in a research study but going beyond them

4. Theory or Hypothesis?
A theory is a general statement or set of statements that describes and explains how different concepts are related to one another.
A hypothesis is a tentative statement of expectation derived from a theory.
Proposes a relationship between two or more variables
Independent and Dependent Variables

5. Research strategies

6. Variables Independent Dependent
The variable hypothesized to “cause”, lead to, or explain the change in another variable- the dependent variable (DV)
This is the variable that you are watching to see changes in while you manipulate the independent variable (IV).

7. Variables Example
Read the following hypotheses and determine which part represents the independent variable and which represents the dependent variable.
Smoking causes cancer.
Independent Variable __________________
Dependent Variable ____________________

8. Independent variable: smoking Dependent variable: cancer

9. Variables Example 2
Read the following hypotheses and determine which part represents the independent variable and which represents the dependent variable. 2. Women who breastfeed are less likely to have triple negative breast cancer. Independent Variable __________________ Dependent Variable ____________________

10. Independent variable: breastfeeding
Dependent variable: triple negative breast cancer
Let’s try another….

11. Variable example #3
Read the following hypotheses and determine which part represents the independent variable and which represents the dependent variable. 3. Men are more likely to read about the news over watching it on the Internet or other media source. Independent Variable __________________ Dependent Variable ____________________ (Whew, this is a tough one…)

12. Independent variable: gender Dependent variable: method of consuming news media

13. Level of Measurement [click title to view video]
INTERVAL-RATIO Distance between categories is meaningful Ex. Income (measured in thousands of dollars); Age (measured in years)
ORDINAL Categories can be rank ordered Ex. Social class (lower, working, middle, upper); Attitudes towards gun control (strongly oppose, oppose, favor, strongly favor)
NOMINAL Categories differ in name Ex. Gender (male, female); Party Identification (Democrat, Republican

14. Activity- Levels of Measurement
Identify the level of measurement for the following variables. Are the following variables nominal, ordinal, or interval-ratio?
Age
Race
Grade point average
Person’s level of education (measured in achievement; high school, some college, Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, PhD)
Income
… Click to the next slide to check your answers.

15. Answers Age – Interval-ratio Race – Nominal
Grade point average – Interval-ratio
Person’s level of education by achievement – Ordinal
Income – Interval-ratio

16. Discrete v. continuous
Along with identifying the level of measurement each variable is, researchers also identify whether their variables are discrete or continuous.
Discrete
Values are completely separate of one another
SPSS Ex. Number of siblings and SEX
Values or categories that cannot be reduced or subdivided into smaller units or numbers
Can be nominal, ordinal, or interval-ratio
Continuous
Values can be infinitely subdivided
SPSS Ex. AGE or EDUC (measured in years)
Can either be interval-ratio or ordinal

17. Basic Concepts Variable Value Score
characteristic or condition that can have different values
e.g., level of stress
Value
possible number or category a score can have
e.g., 0–10
Score
particular person’s value
e.g., a study participant rates her current level of stress as a 5 on a scale of 0–10

18. Variables in spss Each variable contains two or more categories
Each category has to be mutually exclusive and exhaustive
Variables
Categories
Gender
Men
Women
Religious involvement
Involved
Not involved
Social class
Upper class
Middle class
Lower class

19. Design your research
Your research project and class assignments will use data from the following data sets. Be sure to save these to your computer. You can also find them inside the classroom.
GSS 2012
DEMO.SAV
EXER.SAV