7036CCJ: Quantitative Social Research Analysis Report 2 Length: 1,500-2,000 Words (Excludes Graphs/Tables)

Questions Details:

You have been asked to provide a report on the demographic influences on the community’s punitive attitudes to crime in 2001. To do this, you will use the 2001 Australian Electoral Study.

Your report will involve running, presenting and interpreting a series of bivariate analyses and an OLS regression analysis. The report will present the analyses as a narrative which addresses the tasks below. You should use tables and/or graphs (as appropriate), as well as sub-headings provided below. Do not create too many tables. If appropriate, a single table may contain information required for more than one section. Your report should include a short executive summary.

You should use the following sub-headings for the main body of your report. Make sure that you address the tasks and questions outlined in each section below.

Introduction

Briefly introduce the problem being addressed in this report.

Data and sample

In this section, you should describe the data source, sampling procedure and sample (including some characteristics of your sample).

Measuring punitiveness

Create an additive index that measures punitive attitudes, using E4deathp (Death penalty reintroduced for murder), E4lawbrk (Stiffer sentences if break law) , and E4asylum (Asylum seekers turned back). (HINT: Make sure you check the codebook for what each score means. Do you need to think about reverse coding the items before computing the index?) Check and interpret the internal consistency of this index. In your report, you should describe what it measures, how you created it, and present and describe its summary statistics and Cronbach’s alpha.

Demographic characteristics

You will use the following demographic variables for your analysis: gender, age and home ownership. Recode gender as 0=male and 1=female. Check the distribution of age (do you have outliers? Take care of them appropriately). In your report, describe the variables, and present and describe their summary statistics.

Demographic differences in punitiveness

In this section, you will be presenting and interpreting the bivariate relationships between the punitive index and gender, the punitive index and age, and the punitive index and home ownership. (Make sure that you remember to choose appropriate techniques based on the level of measurement. If there is more than one way, choose the most appropriate for your purpose.) This section must briefly describe the analytic techniques used, as well as the key patterns identified from your analyses.

Demographic influences on punitiveness

Recode home ownership into own a home = 1 and all other options = 0. Run an OLS regression of gender, age and recoded home ownership on the punitive index. This section must briefly describe the analytic technique, as well as the recoding of income into a dichotomous variable. You then need to present and interpret the OLS regression results.

Discussion and Conclusion

Summarise your key findings. Overall, what are your conclusions about the influence of gender, age and home ownership on Australian public’s punitiveness? What are the implications for policy of your findings? What might limit the applicability of these results?

You only need to submit an electronic copy. You must include your SPSS output as an appendix (not included in the word count). Your report should have a title page; be double-spaced or 1.5 line spacing; 11 or 12 point font; with all pages numbered. APA referencing is to be used (if there are any references).