Should the government assist low-income college students? (aidcol)

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Use statistical procedures to examine the characteristics of people who favor or oppose the government providing assistance to low-income college students. To do this, start by recoding the variable “aidcol” into two categories—should or should not. Combine those who think the government definitely should and probably should into one category. Combine those who think they probably shouldn’t and definitely shouldn’t into a second category. Then, use this new recoded variable for your analyses. Be sure to use descriptive statistics and tests for significance. Then, write a brief report summarizing your findings. This should be four to five paragraphs: an introduction, two to three paragraphs that make up your key points, and a concluding paragraph. You can assume that you are writing this as a short article in Newsweek or The Economist. You do not want to say “when the null is true” or “the probability of observing” or “we can reject the null.” In fact, don’t use the words “null hypothesis” at all. Instead, you can say “there was a statistically significant difference,” where appropriate. Use any variables in the data set that you think would be relevant to whether someone would favor or oppose government provided assistance to low-income college students. Do not run a regression. Only use the other statistical tests that we learned in the course. Please attach any output related to your analyses. Type this answer using single space and attach it to your exam.



Hint—to quickly find variables that may of interest, open the variable manager. In the space in the upper left corner, it says “enter filter text here.” You can type in anything you are looking for and it will show you all variables that have those words in the description. The variable manager icon is shown in yellow below and circled in red.