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JOMC 201 – Midterm Exam

Fall 2001 dry run

Ground rules: The test will be in this format and length. It will be open book, open notes, and you may bring a calculator, although it is not required. It is designed so that only the very best students will finish in the allotted 50 minutes.

1. Last year at Enormous State University, 212 journalism students sought interviews for internships at major newspapers. Of these, 113 listed SPSS skills on their resumes. Among those who did not list SPSS on their resumes, 42 were invited for interviews. Among those who did list SPSS on their resumes, 45 failed to get an interview.

    1. Put this information in a 2 X 2 table and calculate percents to compare the success of the SPSS-asserting applicants with those who did not claim such skill. Express the result with a simple declarative sentence that includes no numbers.
    2. Back up your first sentence with a second one that contains the relevant quantitative information (two numbers, maximum).
    3. Calculate the chi-square value of the table and explain what it means in a simple declarative sentence.

2. The Carolina Poll is too expensive! To save money, the dean decrees that an error margin of 7 percent is close enough for government work. At the 90 percent confidence level, what must the sample size be?

3. The final Gallup Poll pre-election poll will have a sample size of 3,000. What is the error margin at the 95 percent level of confidence?

 

4. Write down a hypothesis about the relationship between newspaper readership and education in a sample where YEAR is the unit of analysis. In other words, as education increases or decreases, will readership increase, decrease or stay the same. After you have done that, please inspect the attached output from the General Social Survey.

Hypothesis:______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

 

    1. Was your hypothesis sustained? (No fair changing it!)
    2. Please explain why (or why not).

 

 

5. When The Miami Herald decided to report that Gary Hart had spent the night with a woman other than his wife, even though it was not absolutely sure, it was accepting what type of error?

6. Which of the following levels of information captures the most information: interval, nominal, ordinal, ratio?

7. No matter how much you weigh, the scale at the YMCA always overstates your weight by exactly 3 pounds. Is this scale, valid, reliable, both, or neither? Please explain.

8. Professor Meyer is explaining his new research project. He has just described the research question and the population under study. "Now to operationalize!" he says as his eyes light up. What, in this context, does it mean to "operationalize?"

 

9. Suggest a significance test for each of the following:

    1. Comparison of two means.
    2. Comparison of two percents.
    3. Comparison of two continuous variables.

10. Give the names of three measures of association. No need to explain them. Just give the names.

11. The following syntax produced the frequency count below.

 

COUNT

MISS = polabuse polattak polescap polhitok (missing).

COUNT

POLFORCE = polabuse polattak polescap polmurdr (2).

IF (MISS ~= 0) POLFORCE = $SYSMIS.

FREQUENCIES VARIABLES = POLFORCE.

 

 

The result differs from the table at the bottom of Babbie's page 420. Examine the syntax above and find the error. (If there is no error, then Babbie is wrong, and you should so state.)