You may work with on this assignment with a group or alone. You must do this assignment on campus as this software is only available on RU computers (unless you have downloaded the SPSS trial to your computer).
The SPSS Introductory Handout, SPSS Tutorials and Intro to Data Analysis Handout will help you with this assignment (the SPSS materials are posted under SPSS Help and the Intro to Data Analysis Handout was distributed in class and is also posted to the Class Materials page). Use the Coffee Consumption Data (posted to the course web site) for this assignment. You can double-click on the file name to automatically open the file in SPSS (if SPSS is on the computer you are using) or you can right click on the file name, choose Save Target As, save the file to your H drive, and then double-click it to open it in SPSS.
1. Susan is interested in how much coffee people drink at work. To answer this question, she has 10 individuals record the number of cups of coffee they drink daily at work for 4 days. She also collects an index of job stress and each person’s age. The data file contains the four variables concerning coffee drinking (day1 through day4), the job stress variable (jobstres), and the age variable (age).
A. Create a categorical age variable named agecat with three age categories, 24 and younger, 25-29, and 30 and older (hint – you should use the steps under Recode into a Different Variable from page 8 of the SPSS Introductory Handout). Be sure to assign the appropriate variable labels and value labels to this new field (hint – refer to the steps under Defining SPSS Variables Yourself, steps 4 and 5 on page 3 in the SPSS Introductory Handout or review the Recoding Tutorial posted on the SPSS Help page). The variable agecat should not contain any decimal places.
B. Create a categorical job stress variable named jobcat with two categories, 1 (job stress score less than 20) and 2 (job stress score equal to or greater than 20). Hint – you should use the steps under Recode into a Different Variable from page 8 of the SPSS Introductory Handout or review the Recoding Tutorial posted on the SPSS Help page. Be sure to define the appropriate variable and value labels for this new field (the value labels should be 1=low stress and 2 = high stress). Jobcat should contain no decimal places.
C. Create a new variable called drinktot (hint – you should use the steps under Computing Variables: Compute Variables Using a Formula on page 5 of your SPSS Introductory Handout or refer to the Compute Variable Tutorial on the SPSS Help page). This field should be the sum of 4 days coffee consumption. Don’t forget to assign a variable label to this field.
E. Run descriptive statistics on the age (your original age variable not the new age variable you created) and drinktot fields - hint: you should use the steps under Running Descriptives in SPSS on page 11 of your SPSS Introductory handout or review the Descriptives Tutorial on the SPSS Help page. Include the following statistics: mean, minimum, maximum, range, standard deviation, mean, sum, skewness, and kurtosis. (1) Based on the output, do you feel more confident making judgments about age or coffee consumption? Why? (2) How many cups of coffee, in total, were consumed over the 4 days? (3) What can you say about drinktot based on the skewness and kurtosis statistics?
F. Run a crosstab where the stub (row) is jobcat and the banner (column) is agecat. Include the row, column, and total percentages - - hint: you should use the steps under Running Crosstabs in SPSS on page 12 of your SPSS Introductory handout or review the Crosstabs Tutorial on the SPSS Help page. (1) Which age group is experiencing the most job stress? the least job stress? (2) What percentage of respondents experiencing high stress are 25 to 29? (3) What percentage of respondents are 25 to 29 and say they experience low job stress? (4) What percentage of those 25 to 29 say they are experiencing high job stress?
Print the results from D, E, and F. Be sure to write the answers to any questions asked directly on the appropriate print-out (and please staple or clip the pages together). I will not return this assignment to you so make sure you keep a copy for yourself.