Culminating Project

Description

For your final project in data analysis, you will use the GSS Data Explorer to analyze a set of variables of your choice and write up a brief research report. You will use the same methods you’ve used in previous GSS assignments to do this. To get started, follow these steps:
1. Once you’ve signed into GSS Data Explorer, choose Create New Project and name it Final Project.
2. Invite me to your Final Project by choosing “Invite Others” and entering my email rawlinsr@wpunj.edu
3. Starting from in your Final Project, click on User Searches to search through the GSS variables and choose a set of variables that you’d like to analyze. You can do this using keywords or the modules or subjects as we’ve done previously. This time, you can use your own interests to choose variables. You will be performing both univariate (descriptives) and bivariate (associations) analyses, so keep this in mind when you choose your variables. You may want to propose a hypothesis that you can test, or you may want to look at the relationships between variables without predicting what you expect to find. You should choose several variables (at least four.) You may choose to look at the relationships between several possible independent variables on a single outcome (dependent variable), a single independent variable on several outcomes (dependent variables), or the relationships between several sets of variables. Once you’ve selected your variables, move them into your variable cart for the final project. Choose ONE YEAR to conduct all your analyses. (Make sure that it is a year in which all of your variables were measured.)
4. Run the frequencies on all of your selected variables. Construct and percentage tables to report your results. GSS Data Explorer doesn’t run measures of central and measures of dispersion, so instead of running them, simply write a note of which analyses you would run for both central tendency and dispersion (remember that these are chosen based on level of measurement of each variable.)
5. From within your Final Project, run the bivariate analyses appropriate to your data set (either cross-tabulations or correlations.) Run the appropriate analysis for each of your pairs of variables. If you mess up on an analysis, you can delete that one and start over. Run all the appropriate bivariate analyses for all of your variable pairs (so at least two).
6. Write a brief research report in which you identify which variables you analyzed and report the results of your descriptive and inferential analyse. This should include the percentaged frequency tables for each of your variables as well as a discussion of the findings of your cross-tabulations and/or correlations. Did you find any statistically significant relationships? If you proposed a hypothesis, did you find the predicted relationship? You do not need to reproduce the results of the bivariate analyses in your report, because I can see them in the Final Project, although you should include the findings of each analysis in the report. You should write something like “A cross-tabulation analysis of Variable X and Variable Y resulted in a Chi Square p value of __: no significant relationship was found.”
7. Submit the research report here. Leave your analyses and variable searches in your Final Project in GSS so I can review them.