Week 5 Discussion

Part 1 will be about measurement.  Measurement essentially refers to how one collects their information.  In statistics this often refers to levels of variables being measured.  Part 2 is based on the SPSS book and addresses data management. Answer both 1 and 2:

1. Describe something that you would like to study and explain what level(s) your measurements would be at (ex: nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio). How would you measure your variable(s)? What makes you believe that these are the appropriate levels of measurement? Is there any other way that these variables could be measured?

2. Before running any type of SPSS analysis one needs to manage their data. This refers to things such as cleaning up the data, coding, accounting for missing values (responses), creating new variables, etc. You are a teacher’s assistant running the lab and a few students ask you about managing data. Explain to them what managing data means. Provide the students an example of one type of handling (managing) data. Why is this done? How is this done?

Week 5 Discussion Answer

One topic that I would like to study is to determine if there is a significant difference in the proportion of men and women who lost their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic. The variables here would be gender and losing a job. Gender is measured as either man or woman and is a nominal variable because there is no specific order between these two choices. Another way of measuring this variable would be to become more inclusive by not limiting the options to heteronormative options of being man or woman. Rather, we can also include more options that would more accurately describe gender identity.