FOR NJOSH ONLY

Statistics Group Project

Winter 2015

As college students, free time is often limited by the many responsibilities accompanying adulthood. We believe that 75% of full-time college students work part-time jobs at 30 hours a week, or less. To test our hypothesis, we conducted a convenience sample of thirty people around the Tacoma Community College campus. If we were to conduct this survey again, we would likely sample more people in order to get a more accurate evaluation of the population. Our survey consisted of various qualitative and quantitative questions aimed at understanding the way additional responsibilities of the individual affected the number of hours one works per week.

Our questions and results are as follows:

1. Are you male or female?

53.33% are females and 46.67% are males.

2. How old are you?

76.67% are between the ages of 18 and 25.

13.33% are between the ages of 25 and 32.

6.67% are between the ages of 32 and 39.

0% are between the ages of 39 and 46.

3.33% are between the ages of 46 and 53.

3. Do you have a job?

73.33% are employed and 26.67% are unemployed.

4. How many hours a week do you work?

26.67% are unemployed and therefore work 0 hours a week.

10.00% work 1 to 7 hours a week.

13.33% work 7 to 14 hours a week.

13.33% work 14 to 21 hours a week.

13.33% work 21 to 28 hours a week.

3.33% work 28 to 35 hours a week.

20.00% work 35 to 42 hours a week.

5. Do you have more than one job?

26.67% have no job.

63.33% have one job.

10.00% have two jobs.

6. How much do you make per hour?

26.67% are unemployed and therefore do not have an income.

3.33% make between $0.00 and $9.00 an hour.

60.00% make between $9.00 and $18.00 an hour.

3.33% make between $18.00 and $27.00 an hour.

3.33% make between $27.00 and $36.00 an hour.

0.00% make between $36.00 and $45.00 an hour.

3.33% make between $45.00 and $54.00 an hour.

7. Where do you work?

*There are a combined total of 33 jobs held in our sample. Three of the people sampled have two jobs.

24.24% of our sample is not applicable.

12.12% of jobs are in restaurants.

15.15% of jobs are in caregiving.

12.12% of jobs are in manual labor.

18.18% of jobs are in retail.

3.03% of jobs are in education.

12.12% of jobs are in social work.

3.03% of jobs did not fit into these categories.

8. Are you a full-time or part-time student?

9. Do you pay for your tuition?

10. Do you live with your parents?

11. Does anybody help you financially?

12. Do you have kids?

For the number of hours worked per week, we made some additional calculations for our sample. The number of hours worked ranged from 0 hours to 40 hours. We found that the average college student works an average of 16.47 hours. Including students who do not have a job in this average makes the average slightly smaller. The median number of hours worked is 13.50 hours, and the mode is 0 hours since our data consisted of eight students who do not work. For the students that do have jobs, the most common number of hours worked each week is 40.00 hours. The standard deviation of our sample is 14.73.

Confidence Intervals

Using a 95% confidence level, we used the following formula:

The interval is 10.97 to 21.96. This means that college students work an average of anywhere between 10.97 hours to 21.96 hours per week.

The average hourly pay for our sample was $10.11. The median pay was $9.47 and the mode was $0.00. If we did not include the people who are unemployed in our data, the most common pay would be $9.47. The standard deviation of our sample is 10.45.

The interval is $6.21 to $14.01. This means that college students earn anywhere from $6.21 to $14.01 an hour.

Hypothesis Testing

Our null hypothesis: H0= μ ≤ 30 hours, and our alternate hypothesis: H1= μ > 30 hours. Our test is one tailed at a 95% confidence level with a level of significance of 0.05.

The critical value is 1.699, and since -5.03 is less than 1.699 we accepted our null hypothesis.

Correlation Coefficient and Coefficient of Determination

=0.00000267

When we round this number, it ends up being 0 which means that there is no correlation between the two variables. Our variables were pay per hour (x) and hours worked per week (y).

Regression Line

Since there is no correlation between the two variables, we are unable to calculate a regression line using the formula = a + bx.

Goodness of Fit

= 1.30

Our value of chi-square is 1.30.

Conclusions

We feel our initial hypothesis that 75% of full-time college students work part-time jobs at 30 hours a week, or less is partially correct; many people actually work more than 30 hours per week and many people do not have a job at all, but the majority of our sample did work 30 hours a week or less. If we just consider the amount of people that have jobs, regardless of how many hours per week, then our hypothesis is actually fairly accurate since 73.33% of students surveyed did have a job.

Another correlation we found in our data was that the people who had children typically worked more hours per week. We understand that this is true because those students have additional financial responsibilities. Another important result from our data was that 63.33% receive additional help financially. This means that they do not have to work 30 hours a week because their income is largely being supplemented.

Type of Work

Gender

Number of Jobs