UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO MISSISSAUGA SOC222 Measuring Society In-Class Test October 14, 2011 Duration 11:15a.m. 13 :00p.m. Location: DV2074 Aids Allowed You may be charged with an academic offence for possessing the following items during the writing of an exam unless otherwise specified: any unauthorized aids, including but not limited to cell phones, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), ipods, MP3 players, or any other device. NAME: STUDENT NUMBER: SIGNATURE: EXAMINATION AIDS: One hand written formula sheet, a ruler, a calculator, pens, and pencils. You may NOT use any other materials. There are two parts to this test. Part I is multiple choice questions (35 points). Part II is short answers and hand written calculations (65 points). Be sensitive to the points of the questions for allocation of your time and energy. ANSWER THE MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS IN PART I ON THE SCANTRON FORM. ANSWER THE HAND WRITTEN CALCULATION QUESTIONS IN PART II ON THE EXAMINATION BOOKLET. DO NOT ATTACH ANY OTHER PAPERS. AT THE END OF THE TEST, YOU NEED TO HAND IN (1) THIS EXAMINATION SCRIPT, (2) EXAMINATION BOOKLET, (3) SCANTRON, (4) THE FORMULA SHEET. Page 1 of 9
Part I: Multiple Choice (35 points, each question is worth one point) Identify the letter of the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question. 1. The field of statistics a. is the application of laboratory methods to the study of human beings b. is a set of procedures for measuring, analyzing, and summarizing data c. is a set of procedures for assessing the accuracy of survey data d. requires extensive knowledge of advanced mathematics e. c and d 2. Conceptually, the value of the tells us what the X-scores in a sample would be if every sample subject had the same score. a. standard deviation b. mode c. median d. mean e. range 3. Empirical phenomena: a. cannot be seen with the naked eye. b. tell us how many observations have been recorded. c. are things that can be observed and measured. d. are computed to show cause-effect relationships. 4. are 90-degree plots presenting the scores of an interval/ratio variable along the horizontal axis and the frequency of each score in a column parallel to the vertical axis. a. Frequency histograms b. Bar charts c. Pie charts d. Frequency polygons (line graphs) 5. The analysis and understanding of chance occurrences is called. a. joint occurrences b. probability theory c. a normal distribution d. replacement 6. is inaccuracy in our predictions about a population, based on the fact that we do not observe every subject in the population. a. Measurement error b. Sampling error c. Coding error d. Population error e. A mistake Page 2 of 9
7. Data is the same thing as a. information collected in numerical form b. information collected in any form c. statistics d. proof 8. If you want to study the effect of hormonal changes in adolescent boys, your population would be a) all people in the world. b) all males. c) all adolescents. d) all adolescent males. 9. Which of the following is most likely to be measured categorically? a) Weight gain in first year college students. b) Level of authoritarianism in a sample of public accountants. c) Species of dogs appearing in the Sunday comics. d) Deterioration in driving performance under the influence of alcohol. 10. To produce good estimates of population parameters we need to have a sample. a) normal b) independent c) random d) systematic 11. Which of the following is the appropriate pairing? a) Population: Statistic ; Sample: Parameter b) Population: Parameter ; Sample : Statistic c) Population: Statistic ; Statistic : Sample d) Parameter: Statistic ; Sample : Population 12. Inferential statistics are primarily concerned with a) making inferences about a population from a sample. b) describing what the data look like. c) relationships rather than differences. d) none of the above. 13. Descriptive and inferential are forms of statistics, while are forms of data. a) measurement and categorical. b) parameters and statistics. c) populations and samples. d) random and nonrandom. Page 3 of 9
14. Ninety percent of dorm residents approved a proposed ban on smoking. This statement is an example of the use of a. inferential statistics b. univariate descriptive statistics c. multivariate descriptive statistics d. inductive statistics 15. Select the variable that can be measured at the interval-ratio level a. different types of crimes b. number of children in a family c. attractiveness of a person d. emotional stability 16. Which of the following types of variables cannot be continuous? a) nominal variables. b) independent variables. c) dependent variables. d) quantitative variables. 17. A consumer researcher wanted to examine the effects of using different colored boxes on shoppers level of buying her brand of cereal. What is the dependent variable? a) levels of buying b) kind of cereal c) different colored boxes d) the consumer researcher 18. If a distribution of scores has a mean of 30 and a range of 0: a. the variance is 30 b. the quartile deviation Q is 10 c. there is no dispersion in the distribution d. the standard deviation is 1 19. Frequency distributions are used a) As a first step in examining data. b) As a screening device to identify questionable values. c) To organize data. d) All of the above. 20. A normal distribution must a) have outliers. b) be symmetric. c) be positively skewed. d) be negatively skewed. Page 4 of 9
21. An advantage of the interquartile range (Q) over the range (R) is that it a. can be used for nominal level variables. b. includes the most extreme scores c. is based on the middle 50% of the scores d. ignores the first and third quartiles 22. When you subtract the value of the mean from each score in a distribution and then add the results, the sum will be a. 0 b. the standard deviation c. the variance d. a positive number 23. The best measure of central tendency a) is the mean. b) is the median. c) is the mode. d) depends on the data and the question you want to ask. 24. Which of the following is useful with data collected with nominal scales? a) median b) mode c) mean d) none of the above 25. The mode of the numbers 1 3 4 5 6 6 7 8 9 9 9 is a) 6 b) 6.5 c) 6.1 d) 9 26. Given the numbers 6 7 9 11 15 71 86, how many numbers fall below the median? a) 3 b) 11 c) 6 to 86 d) 6, 7, 9, and 11 27. Which of the following measures of central tendency is potentially misleading if the data are collected on an ordinal scale? a) mean b) median c) mode d) none of the above Page 5 of 9
28. For the following data set [1, 9, 9, 9, 11, 28], which of the following is false? a) The mode is 9. b) The median is 9. c) The mean is 9. d) The median location is 3.5. 29. Dispersion refers to a) the degree to which data cluster toward one end of the scale. b) the centrality of the distribution. c) the degree to which individual data points are distributed around the mean. d) all of the above. 30. The difference between s and σ is that σ is a) the value of the standard deviation in a sample. b) the long range average of the variance over repeated sampling. c) the biased estimate of s. d) the value of the standard deviation in a population. 31. You would obtain a negative value for the variance if a) all observations were at the mean. b) the distribution is very negatively skewed. c) the distribution if positively skewed. d) you would never obtain a negative variance. 32. We know that 25% of the class got an A on the last exam, and 30% got a B. What percent got either an A or a B? a) 25% * 30% = 7.5%. b) 25% + 30 % = 55%. c) 45%. d) We cannot tell from the information that is presented. 33. A z score of 1.25 represents an observation that is a) 1.25 standard deviation below the mean. b) 0.25 standard deviations above the mean of 1. c) 1.25 standard deviations above the mean. d) b) and c) but not a). 34. A test score of 84 was transformed into a standard score of 1.5. If the standard deviation of test scores was 4, what is the mean of the test scores? a) 78 b) 80 c) 90 d) 88 Page 6 of 9
35. The difference between a standard score of 1.0 and a standard score of 1.0 is a) the standard score 1.0 is farther from the mean than 1.0. b) the standard score 1.0 is farther from the mean than 1.0. c) the standard score 1.0 is above the mean while 1.0 is below the mean. d) the standard score 1.0 is above the mean while 1.0 is below the mean. Part II: Hand Written Calculations (65 points) ANSWER THE HAND WRITTEN CALCULATION QUESTIONS IN PART II IN THE EXAMINATION BOOKLET. Show all necessary formulas and procedures; keep two decimal points in your final calculations 1. A survey was conducted by sociologists using a random sample of 1000 Canadians to determine the effect of income, education, age, sex, province of residence, martial status, first language spoken, and political orientation on attitudes toward increasing immigration into Canada. The variables were measured as following: Income: Canadian dollars earned last year Education: Years in school Age: Years since birth, rounded down to whole number Province of residence: Name of the province or territory of residence at the time the survey was administered Marital status: Married; Common-Law; Divorced/Separated; Widowed; Single First language: English; French; Other Political orientation: 1= Very leftwing ; 2= Leftwing ; 3= Centrist ; Increasing immigration is good for Canada: 4= Rightwing ; 5= Very Rightwing 0= No ; 1= Yes A). (6 points) Which of the following statements is FALSE? Explain your answer. a. Martial status, first language, and province of residence are nominal scale b. Income and age are ratio scale c. Political orientation and education are both ordinal scale d. Attitude toward increasing immigration is nominal scale and political orientation is ordinal scale. e. None (i.e., all of the statements are true) B). (4 points) Explain and identify the dependent and independent variables 2. a) (6 points) Explain with examples the differences between discrete and continuous variables b) (4 points) Explain descriptive statistics and inferential statistics 3. (6 points) If you flip three coins, what is the probability of getting one head? Page 7 of 9
4. (10 points) Among 15 men and 20 women, the average weight of the men is 58.2 pounds and the average weight of the women is 54.4 pounds. The standard deviations of the two groups are, respectively, 3.1 pounds and 5.1 pounds. John s weight is 70 pounds and Mary s is 65 pounds. Which of them can be considered heavier within their respective gender groups? (10 points) 5. The following table is excerpted from the first 30 cases of the Canadian General social survey (GSS), 2006. The variable name and their values are explained as follows. sex Sex of respondent. VALUE LABEL 1 Male 2 Female marstat Marital status of the respondent. VALUE LABEL 1 Married 2 Living common-law 3 Widowed 4 Separated 5 Divorced 6 Single (Never married) totalchdc Total number of children raised by respondent. dor_q115 How satisfied are you with your current dwelling? Are you: VALUE LABEL 1... very satisfied? 2... satisfied? 3... dissatisfied? 4... very dissatisfied? Answer the following questions (explain and/or give calculations): a) (8 points) (What are the possible indicators, and their values, of the central tendency for the four variables sex, marstat, totalchdc, and dor_q115? b) (5 points) Calculate the range and inter-quartile range for the variable totalchdc c) (4 points) Construct a simple frequency distribution table for the variable totalchdc. d) (8 points) Calculate the mean and standard deviation of the variable totalchdc based on your constructed simple frequency e) (4 points) Draw a graph for totalchdc with appropriate titles and legends Page 8 of 9
Canadian General social survey (GSS), 2006 Cases sex marstat totalchdc dor_q115 1 1 2 0 1 2 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 3 2 4 2 2 3 2 5 2 1 3 1 6 2 1 1 1 7 1 1 1 3 8 1 2 4 8 9 1 1 2 2 10 2 1 2 1 11 1 4 2 2 12 2 1 1 1 13 2 6 0 3 14 1 1 2 2 15 1 1 0 2 THE END Page 9 of 9