Assignment: Variables, Measurement, and SPSS

1A6210Week1AssignmentHowToCompleteTheWeek1Assignment1.docx

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6210 Week 1 Assignment 1 How To Complete The Week 1 Assignment

Follow these steps in detail. Detail = Exactly.

1. Download and install SPSS . Review IBM SPSS Resources in the left menu in the classroom for installation and registration instructions for SPSS.

2. If you cannot download SPSS to your computer, call course support immediately for assistance. Do not stress, just call course support.

3. Download this 3 dataset to your computer:

- Afrobarometer (AFR) 6210 Afrobarometer Data Set.sav

You must have SPSS installed in your computer to download the datasets.

4. Watch these videos located in this week’s learning resources:

Skill Builder: Independent and Dependent Variables

Skill Builder: Unit of Analysis

Skill Builder: Levels of Measurement

Seriously watch the videos; they are short and to the point.

5. Choose 2 variables from the High School Longitudinal Study (HSS) data set; do not use the Afrobarometer dataset.

For an illustrative example, let’s choose variable #6 from the HSS dataset. Find variable #6 in the far left hand column of the dataset.

Scroll right to the column named Label and expand the column to read the description of variable #6. In this case, variable #6 is labeled Scale of student’s mathematics utility.

From this description you can determine that the unit of analysis is students and that the variable measures mathematics utility.

6. Now move right and find the column labeled Measure. Measure is SPSS-speak for Level of Measurement. For the variable, Scale of student’s mathematics ability, the Level of Measurement is Scale. Scale is SPSS speak for variables that are either interval or ratio. Use the Measure column to figure out if the variables you chose are either:

Interval

Ratio

Ordinal

Nominal

7. Now, do the assignment:

Write a less than 1 page summary for each variable (remember, you are choosing only 2 variables) that includes the following:

Identifies each variable.

Reports the mean of the X1SES variable.

Describes each variable.

Identifies the unit of analysis for each variable.

Identifies the level of measurement for each variable.

Explains how each variable could affect social change. For example, you could discuss how knowing Florida students’ mathematical ability might affect social change in terms of allocating education dollars to different counties in Florida.

But do not rely on only your opinion; go into the Walden library and do some research about the topic so you can provide some citations to support your argument.