Analyzing the General Social Survey Study

1. using large data sets wed, feb4, 2015

2. Analyzing a research article • Use the Analyzing Research Articles handout (need one?) • Select one of the five research articles linked from our class schedule (listed under today’s readings Feb 4) • Focus on the purpose of the study, description of study design (participants, methods, how they collected data), data analysis and conclusions • Don’t worry about specific statistical analysis methods • Due next Wednesday 2/11 – print or email to me by class time • Format – whatever works for you (bullets, address some but not necessarily all questions/points from handout) • Counts as one pop quiz (worth up to 2 points)

3. today’s line-up… • Survey research as a method • General Social Survey (dataset for our project) • Project details, variables, think about groups • SPSS & Virtual Lab

4. What is a survey? • A survey is a: • systematic method for gathering information • from (a sample of) entities • for the purposes of constructing quantitative descriptors • of the attributes of the larger population of which the entities are members

5. Typically surveys: • Gather information by asking people questions • Collect information by either (1) interviewers asking questions and recording responses or (2) respondents reading and recording their own answers • Collect information from a subset of the population, a sample, rather than from all members

6. Based on probability design* *units are selected using a method that ensures that each unit has a known, nonzero probability of being included The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods (2008)

7. 1936 election and the Literary Digest survey • Magazine had predicted every election since 1916 • Sent out 10 million surveys---and 2.4 million responded • They said: Landon would win 57% of the vote • What happened: 62% Roosevelt landslide

8. What went wrong? • Sample not representative • Lists came from subscriptions, phone directories, club members • Phones were a luxury in 1936 • Selection Bias toward the rich • Voluntary response: Republicans were angry and more likely to respond • Context: Great Depression • 9 million unemployed • Real income down 33% • Massive discontent, strike waves

9. Polls vs. Surveys • No clear distinction between the two terms • “Poll” often used for private sector opinion studies • Use many of the same design features as studies that would be called surveys • “Poll” rarely used to describe government or scientific surveys • To me, the term poll implies either • A commercial or less-scientific study, or • A quick turn-around survey whose results may be of short-term interest

10. Steps in conducting a survey • Clearly state research objective(s) • Decide on survey mode(s) • How will you contact potential respondents? (web, email, phone, etc.) • In what media will the survey be given? (web, email, phone, etc.) • Determine fielding strategy (how to maximize response rates?) • Design the survey questions and the survey instrument

11. Steps in conducting a survey • Determine sample size and sampling strategy • Obtain Institutional Review Board (IRB) or other approval as necessary • Are respondents promised confidentiality? • What is the impact if their survey responses become known? • Pre-test • Give the survey to some test subjects and get their feedback • What works and what doesn’t? • Are you getting correct data/information? • Revise and re-pre-test as necessary

14. General Social Survey • The GSS (General Social Survey) is a biannual personal interview survey of U.S. households conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). The first survey took place in 1972. • Approximately 3000 American adults are interviewed in person for about 90 minutes and asked around 450 questions.

15. http://www3.norc.org/gss+website/

16. Purpose of GSS • gather data on contemporary American society in order to monitor and explain trends and constants in attitudes, behaviors, and attributes over time • to compare the United States to other societies

17. General Social Survey • demographics & attitudes • The questionnaire contains a standard core of demographic and attitudinal variables, plus certain topics of special interest selected for rotation (called "topical modules") • Items include national spending priorities, drinking behavior, marijuana use, crime and punishment, race relations, quality of life, confidence in institutions, and membership in voluntary associations

19. variables • variable – a characteristic that can vary in value among subjects in a sample or a population. We are interested in similarities and differences - variance • types of variables • categorical • quantitative

20. categorical variable • scale for measurement is a set of categories • examples: • Racial-ethnic group (white, black, Hispanic) • Political party identification (Dem., Repub., Indep.) • Vegetarian? (yes, no) • Mental health evaluation (well, mild symptom formation, moderate symptom formation, impaired) • Happiness (very happy, pretty happy, not too happy) • Religious affiliation • Major

21. SPANKING: Categorical (Single) Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking? Categories: Code as: {strongly_agree} Strongly agree 5 {agree} Agree 4 {disagree} Disagree 3 {strongly_disagree} Strongly disagree 2 {dontknow} DON'T KNOW 1 {refused} REFUSED 0 Sample question from GSS

22. scales of measurement for categorical variables, two types: • nominal scale– unordered categories • preference for president, race, gender, religious affiliation, major opinion items (favor vs. oppose, yes vs. no) • ordinal scale– ordered categories • political ideology (very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative) • anxiety, stress, self esteem (high, medium, low) • mental impairment (none, mild, moderate, severe) • government spending on environment (up, same, down)

23. nominal scale – unordered categories PRES12: Categorical (Single) Did you vote for Obama or Romney? Categories: Code as: Obama 5 Romney 4 Other Candidate (Specify) 3 Didn’t vote for president 2 Don’t know 1 Refused 0

24. ordinal scale – ordered categories POLVIEWS: Categorical (Single) We hear a lot of talk these days about liberals and conservatives. I'm going to show you a seven-point scale on which the political views that people might hold are arranged from extremely liberal--point 1—to extremely conservative--point 7. Where would you place yourself on this scale? Categories: Code as: Extremely liberal 7 Liberal 6 Slightly liberal 5 Moderate, middle of the road 4 Slightly conservative 3 Conservative 2 Extremely conservative 1 DON'T KNOW 0 REFUSED 8

25. quantitative variable • possible values differ in magnitude • examples: • Age, height, weight, BMI = weight(kg)/[height(m)]2 • Annual income • GPA • Time spent on Internet yesterday • Reaction time to a stimulus • (e.g., cell phone while driving in experiment) • Number of “life events” in past year

27. use of statistics to describe, summarize, and explain or make sense of a given set of data

28. Comparison of mean and median • Mean • Uses all of the data • Has desirable statistical properties • Affected by extreme high or low values (outliers - example) • May not best characterize skewed distributions • Median • Not affected by outliers • May better characterize skewed distributions UNC Geography Majors Salaries Example

29. mid-1980's at the University of North Carolina, the average starting salary of geography students was well over $100,000

30. Correlation Causation

31. sample patterns from GSS data • median income of female respondents compared with average income of male respondents • median level of education of respondents who own a gun • number of female respondents who own a gun compared with number of male respondents who own a gun • average age of respondents who indicated the government should spend more on space exploration • self-reported level of happiness compared with income level

32. Sample characteristics of the GSS • The sampling frame of the General Social Survey is all U.S. adults living in households. The sampling frame includes 97.3 % of all U.S. adults. • Who does not live in a household? • college students in dorms • military personnel in barracks • prisoners • elderly persons in retirement homes

33. Does the GSS sample really draw from all the adults in its sample frame? • After the GSS is sampled, only 70% of persons in the sample actually respond to the survey • 23% refuse or cut the survey off in the middle • 2% are unavailable or can’t be found • 5% are missing for other reasons • In general, a response rate of 60% or more is considered minimally acceptable, but you should check your results in any way you can.

34. Let’s look at a GSS questionnaire Start at page 31

35. where can you access SPSS? • Odum Institute • Davis Library 2nd floor – ask lab assistant • https://virtuallab.unc.edu • Lab in the Undergraduate Library (need to confirm)

36. Notes… • Bring a flash drive to the Odum lab on Monday – you may want to save your work • Davis Library >> Room 219 • The dataset that we are using (GSS 2012) is available for download on our class website • schedule>>feb 09 • the dataset is a .sav format – only opens with SPSS