Statistical Literacy 6-7 pages

SOCI 4387: Capstone Seminar Spring 2020 Due date: Monday, 4/27, 11:59 pm 80 points

Statistical Literacy

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is for students to demonstrate general competence on quantitative skills. For this paper, you will interpret graphs, basic percentages and bivariate statistics that sociologists use in the study of assimilation and social mobility of immigrants in the United States.

The primary sources of data on immigrants are administrative data, government surveys, other non-governmental national and local surveys, and qualitative studies. The New Noir is primarily a qualitative study, and even though Clerge’s could not have answered her research questions with survey data, there is a vast sociological literature on assimilation and acculturation that uses a quantitative approach. For this assignment, you will use statistical data from a National Academy of Science report, to examine how children of immigrants are doing compared to their immigrant parents in terms of socioeconomic mobility.

Assignment: Write a professional 6-7 page paper typed and double-spaced. Keep your language formal and avoid contractions. If you work with an open-source word processor, create a PDF file before uploading your file. Remember that I will use this paper to assess how you use empirical evidence to make an argument.

Do not include the tables in your assignment but clearly label in your paper which table or graph that you are describing. Provide a concise and clear description of all tables AND graph below as specified. If you have theoretical elements or can cite previous research findings to offer a more significant interpretation of the table, go ahead and do not forget to include your bibliographical references. If you do not have the theoretical or empirical background to give more context to your description, then just provide a description. Do not share your opinion of what you think is going on unless you can back up your opinion with empirical evidence, previous research, or theories.

Tables 1 and 2.

For these tables, focus on immigrants coming from Haiti, Jamaica, and Africa to discuss average education, percent with less than 12 years of education (high-school dropouts) and percent with more than 16 years of education (graduate studies). Emphasize intergenerational changes across the first and second generation. You can use the category of all countries as your point of reference (last row) but discuss men and women’s results separately.

In Table 2, we can observe that, on average, daughters from Haitian female immigrants increased their education from 12.6 to 14.7 years. What statistical test would you use to determine if this is a significant change? What factors did you take into account to choose this particular statistical test?

Graph 1.

Describe the association showed in graph 1. How well can we predict a child’s educational attainment from their father’s education? Be specific. If you say “very well” or “not well at all”, explain what you mean by that and justify your answer.

What can you say about the assimilation of immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, and Africa in terms of their education? What statistical test would you use to determine if the r-squared statistic is significant?

Table 3.

Use this table to describe the prevalence of poverty for blacks and non-Hispanic whites by immigrant generation.

Table 4.

The total fertility rate is a demographic indicator that sociologists use to measure assimilation, and represents the average number of children a woman would have at the end of her reproductive life. In general, we expect to see a lower fertility among second and third generations compared to first generation immigrants. Use Table 4 to discuss the experience of immigration on the fertility of Hispanics, blacks, and Asians.

What statistical test would you use to determine if the differences we observe in these three groups are not due to random error? Specify the factors that you considered to choose this particular statistical test.

Table 5.

The family is a fundamental institution of human societies, but family structure—size, composition, and social relationships—can shift rapidly in countries with a large presence of immigrants. Families change during the immigration process and the forms they take are more a product of the social context at their destinations than a reflection of cultural preferences. Describe the effect of immigration on the composition of black families using table 5.

If we were to determine if the association between generations and living arrangements for blacks is significant, what statistical test would we use? What are some of the limitations of this test? Be specific.

Use your notes from your statistics course, a statistics textbook, or go here to access Lane’s.Online Statistics Education website: http://onlinestatbook.com/2/index.html if you need assistance with tests for statistical significance.