Respond to Discussion Question

For this week’s topic, I have chosen the “family income” for continuous variable and “labor force status” for categorical variable. The measure of central tendency and measure of variability were computed.

For the family income, the mean, median, mode, and standard deviations were computed and summarized in Table 1. There were 2,314 valid cases with 224 of them missing which is only about 9% of the total. The mean family income is $48,603.29 and the median is $33,255.00. The mode or the most frequently occurring family income is $49,883. Looking at the histogram of the family income (Figure 1), most of the incomes are at most $104,000. However, about 9% of the incomes are above $160,000. Because of that small percentage having very high income, the mean is pulled up to $48,603 although half of the samples have incomes of at most $33,255.00. Hence, I think it would be better to use the median for central tendency. 

The standard deviation for the measure of variability is $43,340.89. We can say that on the average, the incomes differ from $48,603.29 by $43,340.89. Also, based on empirical rule, at least 68% of the incomes fall between the range $48,603.29 ± $43,340.89.

Table 1. The mean, median, mode, and standard deviation of family income

(see attached file)

Figure 1. Histogram showing the distribution of family income. 

With the descriptive statistics obtained from variable family income we have the idea of the economic status of the majority of the households. The information gained from the analysis can be used by planning bodies whose goal is to alleviate poverty.

For the variable labor force status, a frequency distribution was created and its bar graph for the picture of the distribution. Based on Table 2, the category with the highest frequency is the “working full time” group. About half of 2,536 respondents are full time workers. The “working full time” group represents the mode of labor force status of respondents.  It is this same status with the highest bar in the bar chart (Figure 2) and with largest slice in the pie chart created last discussion. About 59% are working either full time or part time. The remaining percentage is composed of those who are temporarily not working, laid-off, retired, in school and keeping houses.

Being a categorical data, the appropriate measure of central tendency for labor force status of respondents is the mode. For measure of variability, we cannot add, subtract, multiply, nor divide categorical data and therefore the standard deviation is not appropriate for labor force status.

The distribution of labor force status gives us information on how big is the group that needs support to have a decent life. We would also know from the distribution how many are in school and are potentials to be included in working group. The government officials and planners can make use the information.

Table 2. The frequency distribution of variable labor force status

(see attached file)

Figure 2. Bar graph showing the frequency of each category of labor force status.

Reference

Data Set 2014 General Social Survey. Retrieved 12 March 2017 from https://class.waldenu.edu