Statistics 1510 Survey Data Analysis George W.

Minder IV Taft College INTRODUCTION Through the combined work of some college students and professors, there exists a somewhat large pool of broad spectrum data gathered by surveys given to 2628 participants. The questions range from height and weight to political opinions, education, and salaries. The data pool allows students to have access to a large amount of varied data without the monumental cost and hardship that individual surveying would incur. I set out with the goal to show correlations among physical, socioeconomic, political, ethnic, and moral attributes. Certain factors, such as education, can have major impacts on our income, but other lesser known factors such as handedness or height to weight ratios may also have far-reaching impacts on human behavior; such as how much water they drink, or whether or not they believe in the death penalty. I looked for a correlation between race and the participants personal knowledge of someone with HIV. I also looked for trends in political affiliation and how well the participants think President Obama will fare in the 2012 election, as well as the education level within those parties. This research provides a basic outline of opinions on hot-button topics within common racial, socioeconomic, and/or political groups existing in the United States of America today. METHODS A network of a few college professors set up a database to hold the information collected by their students in statistics classes. They use a predetermined survey without ambiguous or biased questions, given to their students. The students then find ten willing participants to fill out the survey. The surveys do not collect any contact information or names in the hopes that the participants may answer more truthfully without any repercussions or embarrassment from their answers should the results be opened to public or private scrutiny. The data is entered in the database and compiled into an excel document for download. I used a simple 1-in-k sampling technique, using a calculator to generate a random integer between one and fifty-two. I chose a sample size of fifty from the 2628 completed surveys. Using this sample, I drew up several possible correlations to show how certain factors may or may not interact with each other. I used excel to draw graphical displays and data tables to show these relationships in concise and easy to interpret formats. I used a graphing calculator to perform statistical calculations; such as means, medians, and quartiles, and store lists of data to be sorted. I compiled the age of every participant into a list in my TI-83+ and used Stat>Calc>1-VarStats to some up with the average age. I also used a graph made in excel to show the distribution of ages in my sample with five year intervals from eighteen to seventy-three. For most of the data, there is nothing more to do than to count it up by hand. I used a simple set of five lines to count up correlations to make tables and graphs in excel such as the party affiliation tables showing correlations between party and education or Obamas reelection. For the questions dealing with handedness and water consumption, I took the average of water

Statistics 1510 Survey Data Analysis

Taft College

consumed by right handed participants and compared that to the averages for water consumption by left handed and ambidextrous participants, because the sheer number of right handed participants heavily skews the total amount of water consumed in a useless statistical comparison. RESULTS In the instance of participants changing to the Tea Party, my sample showed 4 out of 50 participants (8%) switching to the Tea Party. 3 resigned from the Republican party and 1 from the Democrat party to join the new Tea Party movement. As for the relationship between handedness and water consumption, the table below shows the averages and totals for the entire samples water consumption grouped by handedness.
Handedness Female Male Total Average Water Intake Total Water Intake Left 2 2 4 91.25 365 Right 21 23 44 49.1136 2161 Ambidextrous 1 1 2 86 172

The amount of people for or against Proposition 8 as a correlation to gender is shown in the next table.
Prop 8 Yes No Male 12 14 Female 12 12

The age distribution of this sample had a median set at 27 years old, but is skewed right giving an average of 32.5306. The minimum age was 18 years old, with a maximum of 70 years old. The shape of the distribution is represented by the following graph. One survey is missing an age entry, slightly disrupting the data.
14

1 1

6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 x<23 8< 2 3<x<28 28<x<33 3 3<x<38 38 <x<4 3 43 <x<4 8 48 <x<53 53<x<58 5 8<x<6 3 6 3<x<68 6 8<x<7 0 2 1

Statistics 1510 Survey Data Analysis

Taft College

The data from my sample showed that half of the participants only had a high school diploma or equivalent. This graph shows the relationship between education levels and gross yearly income of the sample.
25

20

15

High School Associate Bachelor M aster

10

Ph. D/M .D.

0 0<x<25000 High School Associate Bachelor M aster Ph. D/M .D. 20 1 3 0 0

25000<x<50 000 4 4 2 2 0

50000<x<75 000 1 1 3 0 0

75000<x<10 0000 1 0 1 2 0

100000<x<1 25000 0 0 0 2 0

125000<x<1 50000 0 0 0 0 0

150000<x<1 75000 0 0 0 1 0

175000<x<2 00000 0 0 0 0 1

500000<x<5 25000 0 0 0 1 0

The next graph shows whether or not handedness affects how one feels about the death penalty within my sample.
40 35

30

25

20

15

10

0 Ambidexterous Left Right

Yes 0 3 31

No 1 1 9

Undecided 1 0 4

Statistics 1510 Survey Data Analysis

Taft College

The next graph shows the relationships between race and knowing someone who has HIV. The outer ring shows the majority 43 of the sample of 50 who answered no to this question, and the inner ring shows 7 out of 50 (14%) who answered yes to this question. The sections are divided by race and the scale between the rings is not preserved by population only the sections of each ring represent how big a part of each ring is taken up by a race.

No, 8 Yes, 1 Yes, 0

No, 2 Yes, 1 White Hispanic Black No, 23 Other

Yes, 5 No, 10

I also contrasted the differences in education when it comes to political party in this next graph, showing how many Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and other parties had higher degrees in comparison to each other.
12

10

0 Republican Democrat Independent Other

High School 7 10 3 6

Associate 1 3 2 0

Bachelor 4 3 1 1

Master 3 4 0 1

Ph. D. 0 0 1 0

Statistics 1510 Survey Data Analysis

Taft College

The next graph represents the amount of hours the sample works as a percentage within their educational categories. These categories were defined by highest formal degree obtained: high school, associates, bachelors, masters, and Ph.D.
100% 0 2 90% 1 2 0 80% 6 70% 80<x<90 60% 3 50% 3 40% 3 30% 0 2 3 70<x<80 60<x<70 50<x<60 4 1 40<x<50 30<x<40 20<x<30 10<x<20 0<x<10 4 0 0 1 0 1 0

20% 2 7 10% 3

1 0 1

0% High School

0 Associate

Bachelor

Master

0 Ph. D/M.D.

DISCUSSION There are a few exceptions, but the majority of the participants reflect the principle: higher education leads to higher income. All participants who had either high school diplomas or associates degrees had jobs with gross annual incomes somewhere between 0 and $75,000. 20 out of 26 (76.92%) participants with only a high school diploma made less than $25,000 per year. Only 1 out of 6 (16.67%) participants who had an associates degree made less than $25,000 per year. All participants with an associates degree worked at least 30 hours per week with one outlier working 85 hours per week, showing that the entire sample was employed very close to the full-time: 40hours per week. The data representing whether or not handedness affects how one feels about the death penalty, is inconclusive. There are so few ambidextrous and left handed participants in this sample that a meaningful comparison cannot be drawn because only 6 participants were not right handed. The data showing the relationship between genders and supporting Proposition 8 is relatively uniform, showing that the decision is a close call. 50% of the

Statistics 1510 Survey Data Analysis

Taft College

women and 53.85% of men in my sample disagree with Prop 8. 20 participants in my sample were Democrats, 15 were Republican, 7 were Independent, and 8 were in other political parties. Of the 20 Democrats 10(50%) had only a high school diploma compared to 7 of the 15 (46.67%) Republicans had only a high school diploma. Most people would assume that minorities would have the highest contact with HIV. As a proportion of participants, my sample showed that 5 of 28(17.89%) white participants knew someone personally with HIV. Compare that to 0 of 2 black participants, 1 of 11(9.09%) Hispanic participants, or 1 of 9(11.11%) participants of other races who knew someone personally with HIV.