Week 10 Questionnaires and Structured Interviews Chapter 9

Vs 80% response rate for GSS

The General Social Survey (GSS) A bit about the survey

General Social Survey  Mission of the GSS is to make timely, high-quality, scientifically relevant data available to the social science research community.  Covers a broad range of topics.  Design stresses replication (for over- time comparisons).

General Social Survey: Sample  The GSS target population is adults 18 and over living in households in U.S.  The sample is a multistage probability sample  Interviews conducted in person

General Social Survey  This is the primary data set that the Soc 201/Psc 202/CJS 201 class will be using throughout the remainder of the semester-- including the final project.  The GSS codebook, or list and specification of variables you will use is available in our class folder.

GSS Video Approx 12 minutes Will call on class members to answer following questions using stratified (by row) random sample –to illustrate the method they use.

GSS Video Questions 1. What is bias in question wording? 2. What type of a study design is NORC GSS?  Pretest-Posttest Control Group Experiment  Posttest only Control Group Experiment  Extended or Solomon Four Group Experiment  Comparison Group Quasi Experiment  Cross Sectional Survey Design  Panel Design  Trend Study  Case Study 3. How is NORC GSS sampled? 4. What are Questionnaire Design “Think Alouds” 5. There are several types of Don’t Knows. Do you ever suggest an answer?

GSS Video Questions 1.What is bias in question wording?wording 2.What type of a study design is NORC?  Pretest-Posttest Control Group Experiment  Posttest only Control Group Experiment  Extended or Solomon Four Group Experiment  Comparison Group Quasi Experiment  Cross Sectional Survey Design  Panel Design  Trend Study  Case Study NORC is a Trend study, but we only use one year so we treat it like a Cross Sectional Survey Design

Source: Schaefer 2004:34

Return

GSS Video Questions 3. How is NORC sampled?  Stratified (multistage) 4. What are Questionnaire Design “Think Alouds”  Question Wording Support increased spending on:  Welfare30%  Assistance to the Poor60% 5. There are several types of Don’t Knows. Do you ever suggest an answer?  No! Remain Neutral.

Source: Giddens, Duneier, and Appelbaum 2003:39

Garbage in…… …..Garbage Out The GSS is not Garbage, much time and effort goes into designing it.

Reverse Engineering To write good questionnaires we must first be familiar with what they are designed to produce…  Tables

ORGANIZING DATA INTO TABLES Exercise 6 in Process

The GSS data set Data set available in SPSS format. (currently using the SPPS data for Exercise 6).  Save into your space on H:/ drive. You should only have ONE copy in your H drive.  Never print the whole data set!!!

Frequency Distributions  For nominal and ordinal variables, the first step in data analysis is the construction of frequency distributions and/or graphic displays  Frequency distributions tabulate the number of cases in each category of the variable

Generally use valid percents, not counts/ frequency. SPSS gives both for univariate tables. If using percents either include the sample size or also include counts. Why don’t we look at these? See next slide

Source: Giddens, Duneier, and Appelbaum 2003:40 Too many DK’s also a problem

Frequency Distributions  For nominal and ordinal variables, the first step in data analysis is the construction of frequency distributions and/or graphic displays  Frequency distributions tabulate the number of cases in each category of the variable Why not continuous???continuous??

Good For Checking to See if Data is correct, but it doesn’t summarize well unless you group it into smaller bins. (i.e. re-code into age groups 0-20, 21-25, etc. – will do this in Exercise 7)

Types of variables  Nominal  variables simply categorize cases (e.g. sex, religion)  Ordinal  variables allow cases to be ordered (e.g. a question which asks “how important is religion to you?”)  Interval/ratio  Aka Continuous  variables use standard units of measurement (e.g., miles, dollars)

Frequency Distributions are: More Reasonable for Ordinal, Nominal or Re- coded Continuous Variables

Contingency Tables Analyzing bivariate relationships using SPSS Crosstabulation Tables Quiz on cross tabs next lecture!!

Bivariate Analysis with Pivot Tables  There are two kinds of variables, one that is labeled independent and one that is labeled dependent. The dependent variable is the one whose variability we want to explain (the “effect” in a statement which suggests cause-and- effect). The independent variable is used to explain a dependent variable (the “cause” in a cause and effect statement).

Does Gender (IV) cause opinion (DV)? Sample Crosstab

... continued  For contingency tables, our format will be: Independent variable = rows Dependent variable = columns “% of row” allows comparisons across the categories of the independent variable

Interpreting Bivariate Tables  In Assignment 6, you will generate (or have already done so) crosstabulation tables for two bivariate relationships: the independent variable is BORN. you will use CONEDUC as one dependent variable and you will choose the other dependent variable

Interpreting Bivariate Tables  Advice on interpretation: 1.Describe the distribution of the dependent variable in the general population 2.Describe the differences (or non- differences) among the categories of the independent variable 3.Mention the highlights 4.Keep the overall relationship in mind

Let’s practice with another example.

Sample Crosstab

What is abnomore?

I:\CourseInformation\Ridzi\Soc 201-Psc 202\Data\GSS

Which to Pick? 206B (abnomore) would fit in here

Sample Crosstab Question: 206. Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if... B. If she is married and does not want any more children?

Take out a pen and paper and write down an interpretation. We will walk through it together.

Advice on interpretation: –Describe the distribution of the dependent variable in the general population Describe the differences (or non- differences) among the categories of the independent variable Mention the highlights Keep the overall relationship in mind

Sample Description  People in the GSS data are more likely to say “no” (59%) than “yes” (41%) to abortion if a woman is married and does not want any more children.  Women are more likely to say “no” than men. 62% of women say “no” and 56% of men say “no”.

Left off

1.Overall, did more people strongly support, support, oppose or strongly oppose preference in hiring blacks? 2.People with ______degree were most likely to strongly support preference in hiring blacks.

Preparation for Lab 7

Re-Grouping

Polviews 65 A. 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 fro m extremely liberal--point 1--to extremely conservative-- point 7. Where would you place yourself on this scale?

 Polviews has a lot of categories (more than 6), so let’s run a frequency and see how best to re-code it smaller so that we can fit it in a manageable cross tab table.

Re-Grouping Made Easy 1. Red Delicious 2. Red Rome 3. McIntosh 4. Jonathan 5. Golden Delicious 6. Granny Smith We have 6 groups and we need 2.

Re-Grouping Made Easy So Let’s recode Groups 1-4 into 1 Name it: the red apples and Groups 5-6 into 2 (not red apples) 1. Red Delicious 2. Red Rome 3. McIntosh 4. Jonathan 5. Golden Delicious 6. Granny Smith

Re-Grouping Made Easy 1. Red Apples 2. Not Red Apples 1. Red Delicious 2. Red Rome 3. McIntosh 4. Jonathan 5. Golden Delicious 6. Granny Smith

How Should we Re-code? 1 Liberal 3 Conser vative 2 Moderate Re-Coding Should be Logical (i.e. liberal and conservative in separate categories) If Possible, groups should be approximately even size Not 1,000 and 20 Don’t want to obscure patterns that existexist Could also have grouped them this way for example

The concept to keep in mind when re-coding  Example of importance of re-coding into appropriate categories:  ml/Histogram.html ml/Histogram.html

Too Small Too Big Just Right

Polviews is Fairly Even Distributed So 3 categories both make sense and don’t obscure trends

Recode Polviews to Polview2

Don’t forget to add meaningful labels!

Now do a Crosstab with Chi Square for Degree and Polviews  Then do one with the control variable of race.

Just what you’ve always wanted…. Our very own “think aloud”

If we have time In Folder also, demonstrate Word Comments.