After you complete reading and doing Chapters 1-9 in Babbie & Halley’s Adventures in social research, complete the following brief exercises.   Submit your work next week (October 20) at the beginning of the class session.  Use your GSS.SAV file supplied with your book.  
  

1. Compute a frequency distribution of PRAY.  Determine what ______% of the respondents rarely or never pray, ________% pray less than weekly, ________% pray about weekly, ________% pray daily, and ________% pray several times a day.

2. Compute a simple line chart for age. Print a copy the chart.  You print a single chart by selecting (or clicking) the one you want among all the output; selecting “draws” a box around the chart.   Next select FILE  --> PRINT and toggle the “print selection” option before you print; otherwise you will print all of the output.

3. Compare the frequency distribution for PRAY with the ones for ATTEND and CHATT.  Do the two sets of paired tables present similar pictures of religiosity?  Explain.  What conclusions can you make about the strength of religiosity in the United States?  Would you say that these variables indicated that American society is “deeply religious?”  Somewhat religious? 

4. Recode ATTEND into a new variable CHATT2, which involves four categories – never or rarely, about yearly, about monthly, weekly.  This new variable limits “weekly” to codes 7 & 8, converts “about monthly” from codes 4, 5 & 6, “about yearly” from codes 2 & 3, and “rarely or never” from 0 & 1.  Compare CHATT and CHATT2; what are the prime differences you see.

5. Recode PRAY into a new variable (PRAY2) that involves only four categories – “rarely or never,” “about weekly,” “daily,” and “several times a day.”  Compute a frequency distribution of this new variable.  Print a copy the table.  To print a single table, select (or click) the one table you want from among all the output; selecting “draws” a box around the table.   Next select FILE --> PRINT and toggle the “print selection” option before you print; otherwise you will print all of the output.

6. Hypothesize the relationship between religiosity and attitudes toward homosexuality. Select an indicator of religiosity (CHATT2 or PRAY2).  Then, use the Crosstabs procedure to determine if your hypothesis has sufficient empirical support.  Set religiosity as the column variable and attitudes toward homosexuality as the row variable, and request column percentages.  Present your table and summarize the following:

a. ________% of the “religious” report that homosexual relations are “always wrong,” and  
   ________% of the “not religious” report that homosexual relations are “not wrong at all.”