What to Do for a PA552 Data Analysis Project and Project Paper: Simple Guidelines (or "What to Do When You are Desperate")

Perhaps you are running out of time to do the PA552 project paper and you have lots and lots of other things to do. You need to do something fairly easy for the PA552 project, but want to do it competently and get a passing grade. In short, you are getting desperate. Below is some help for you.

A project using the GSS (General Social Survey) data fits the bill. The data are easily available, both for on-line analysis on the SDA web sites, and for use with SPSS.

Proceed doing a project using GSS (or similar) data as follows.

1. Browse the content of the dataset and find several variables (2-5) measuring attitudes/opinions you are interested in studying. To browse the content, use the on-line codebooks on the SDA sites. You can also look at the Word file (GSS_variable_list.doc) of GSS variable names/labels on my web site (Data folder).

   Start writing now your PA552 project paper. State the topic your paper will investigate using the GSS (or other) data. Describe the variables you are using. Copy and paste in the exact question wordings from the on-line codebook. Your paper is now already partly written.

2. Start doing the data analysis by running the frequency distributions for each of the variables. Write this up in your paper. If your variables are from questions asked repeatedly over time, run the SDA crosstab (by year) to look for changes over time. Create tables or graphs to show the results. Write in your paper a description presenting the findings in the tables/graphs. Your paper is now really moving along!

3. Now do some data analysis to investigate how these opinions/attitudes are different for different groups of people, defined by demographic characteristics like sex, race, and age. Create tables to present the results and write up your description of the results in your paper. The project paper is now almost done.

4. Write a short conclusion to the paper, probably just a summary. Your project paper is now done!

Absolutely DO NOT: Cut and paste into your paper computer output. SPSS and SDA, and almost all output from statistics software, is not clearly labeled and optimized for clear presentation. Rather, prepare your results as clearly as possible for your audience, which is probably a non-technical audience. Make any tables as clear as possible using clear labeling. However, it is not required to word process the tables; you can write them out neatly by hand if you want. You can also include pasted-in computer output in appendices, but not in the main text.

Absolutely DO NOT: Do something really stupid, like computing means, correlations, or doing regression using nominal variables. That will force me to give a very low grade, since I feel I have to uphold some standards by the time we do a final project in the PA551/PA552 sequence.

As you progress through writing your project paper, feel free to show me what you have done to date if you would like some quick feedback.