Learning Resources WK 3
Required Readings
Frankfort-Nachmias, C., & Leon-Guerrero, A. (2020). Social statistics for a diverse society (9th ed.). Sage Publications.
Chapter 3, “Measures of Central Tendency” (pp. 75-111)
Chapter 4, “Measures of Variability” (pp. 113-150)
Wagner, III, W. E. (2020). Using IBM SPSS statistics for research methods and social science statistics (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Chapter 4, “Organization and Presentation of Information”
Chapter 11, “Editing Output”
Datasets
Your instructor will post the datasets for the course in the Doc Sharing section and in an Announcement. Your instructor may also recommend using a different dataset from the ones provided here.
Required Media
Laureate Education (Producer). (2016d). Descriptive statistics [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
In this media program, Dr. Matt Jones demonstrates the procedures used for central tendency and variability using SPSS software. Focus on how this demonstration might support your analysis in this week’s Assignment.
Optional Resources
Wheelan, C. (2013). Naked statistics: Stripping the dread from data. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Skill Builders:
Measures of Central Tendency for Continuous Variables
Standard Deviation as a Measure of Variability for Continuous Variables
Measures of Central Tendency and Variability for Categorical Variables
To access these Skill Builders, navigate back to your Blackboard Course Home page, and locate “Skill Builders” in the left navigation pane. From there, click on the relevant Skill Builder link for this week.
Assignment
Using the SPSS software, open the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS) data set. Choose the two (2) variables: Highest Level of Education Completed and T1 Socio-economic Status Composite. Write a 2-3 page analysis of your descriptive analysis results and include a “copy and paste” output from your analysis with the final document. Based on the analysis results, provide a brief explanation of what the implications for social change might be.
