Fall, 2005 (Roos, Soc. 311)


Assignment 4: Hypothesis construction, take 2 (due Monday, October 24th)

This assignment is designed to give you another chance at Assignment 1. Choose the three variables from the General Social Survey that you hope to use for your final project. You may use the same two variables you used in Assignment 1 (adding on an appropriate "test variable"). As you did for Assignment 1, use the web to access the General Social Survey codebook. MAKE SURE ALL YOUR VARIABLES HAVE DATA FOR 2002 (you may choose an earlier year if all your variables aren't available in 2002). Include the printed pages showing your three variables from the GSS website with your write-up. As in Ass. 1, use your cursor to copy the frequencies for your three variables to a Word file for printing. Don't print from the GSS site.

As in Assignment 1, select an independent and dependent variable and develop a hypothesis that describes your expectation about how these two variables are related. [Remember, learn from your mistakes in Assignment 1: BE SPECIFIC.] Include a brief statement about how you came up with your theory and hypothesis--why do you have the expectation you do? Then, follow through the research process to conceptualize and operationalize your variables. Recall that you are operationalizing your concepts using the GSS variables.

Now that you're familiar with creating tables, make up hypothetical data and present them in an original, bivariate table. Describe these hypothetical results, and then describe how you would reformulate your theory. In your reformulation, refer to the third variable you have chosen as the "test variable." Operationalize and conceptualize that variable too. DO NOT INCLUDE THE TEST VARIABLE IN YOUR TABLE AT THIS POINT; YOUR TABLE SHOULD SHOW ONLY THE HYPOTHETICAL DATA FOR THE ORIGINAL, BIVARIATE RELATIONSHIP.

For this assignment, you should start thinking carefully about how you want to collapse your variables for presentation in your final tables; that is, try to have substantively compelling reasons for why you collapse the variables the way you do.

YOUR PAPERS MUST BE TYPEWRITTEN DOUBLE SPACE (12 font, about 2-4 pages). Your table should be in Word or Excel.

 

FYI: the 2004 GSS data just became available. If you want to check them out, click on this link: 2004 GSS Check with one of us if you want to switch variables.