MicroCase Exercise
How Does Social Class Matter?

Be sure to read the entire assignment carefully as you do it. Print the assignment out and circle or fill in your answers (print legibly please!) Please use complete sentences when the question is open-ended.

You have three options for using MicroCase CP (if you do not already have the Curriculum Plan version installed from another course): 1) Download the programs and the four data sets from the course Sakai site; 2) Access the program in the public computer labs (look in Statistics folder) or in the sociology lab (look for icon on desktop); or 3) Install the full program using an installation disk available from the department secretary).

This exercise is designed to serve several purposes. It will introduce some of you to MicroCase and to some of the essentials of data analysis; for most, this aspect will constitute more of a review, except for the fact that we will be using the full professional version: MicroCase Curriculum Plan. For those of you who have not used this version before, you will find that the format is similar but not identical to the student versions used in other courses. You should find the transition reasonably straightforward; click here for a review of the basic steps involved in testing hypotheses with scatterplots or cross-tabulations. Please note that while it is ok to get technical help from others in using the program and accessing the data sets, I expect you to complete this exercise on your own. Submission of this exercise constitutes a statement on your part that the answers you provide below were reached on your own, and you will be asked to affirm this at the end. Plagiarism will result in the severe penalties described in the department's plagiarism policy.

The substantive goal of this exercise is to address the question: How does social class matter? For many years, it has been a common assumption of almost all sociologists that social class matters a lot. For example, in his widely-read Invitation to Sociology (first published in 1963), Peter Berger wrote:

The PBS film and website, People Like Us: Social Class in America, created in 2001, similarly sees class differences in styles of living as a central hallmark of our society. In several readings, however, we have seen that some social scientists have begun to question this view, and to suggest that social class no longer has the salience in people's lives that it once did. Some even talk of the "death of social class."

This exercise uses a number of different datasets that come with MicroCase to analyze these issues. At other times in this course we will rely on more qualitative and intuitive data and approaches, but in this exercise we will draw on quantitive data from a number of different studies addressing the issue of class in the U.S.

Ronald Reagan once said that it was "un-American" to talk about classes in the U.S., a sentiment endorsed by George W. Bush. Their assumption, shared by many, is that just about everyone is middle class in America, and therefore inequality is not a significant issue. Let's start by examining this assumption. Is the U.S. basically a single class society, composed of a vast middle class?

Readings in the course so far have demonstrated clearly the enormous differences in income and wealth in American society. This is undeniable, as is the fact that these differences are increasing. But class is about more than economic differences alone. Most sociologists feel that for a class structure to exist, individuals of similar economic standing have to coalesce into groups, manifested in differences in such things as lifestyle, outlook, and behavior. So let's turn to data on these sorts of things.

Open MicroCase CP (found in the statistics folder in the public labs). The first thing you always have to do is to open a data file. Click on File Management and then Open File. Then go Archive>Survey>US>GSS, which stands for General Social Survey, an almost-yearly survey of American attitudes for three decades. You will notice that each year's survey comes in two forms, one with an "r" after the year and one without. The latter is the "enhanced instructional version," which includes fewer, but recoded, variables ready for student use. Generally this is adequate, but unfortunately the enhanced version does not include the variable we want to look at: self-reported class. So open the Gss72r dataset (the "r" stands for original research version). Now click on Basic Statistics and then Univariate. Choose Variable 121, Class. Take note of the question on which it is based and answer the following question:

Q1: Which type of measure of class is this? (circle one) Emic or Etic

Click on OK and view the pie chart.

Q2: Were many people unable to place themselves in the class structure? Yes or No

Q3: Fill in the table below for 1972.

Q4: Go back to File Management and open Gss06r (variable 202 this time) to find responses to the same question in the year 2006.

Q5: What was the modal (most commonly-chosen) class label in 1972?________________

Q6: What was the modal class label for 2006? _________________________

Q7: Was there a major shift in people's class identification between 1972 and 2006?

Yes

No

Q8: It was noted above that some commentators see the United States as an overwhelmingly middle class society. Does the table above support the view that most Americans consider themselves middle class?

Q9: Did the data in the table above surprise you? Were you surprised by the answer to question 8? Discuss below:

Let's now turn to some of the lifestyle issues Peter Berger points to. Go back to File Management and open Gss00, the enhanced instructional version. Click on Basic Statistics, then Cross-Tabulation. Use Income 98 (variable 57) as your column (independent) variable. Take note of the question on which variable 57 is based. We will use this variable as a rough measure of social class.

Q10: We could have chosen to use variable 56, the respondent's own income as our measure of class. Why is respondent's family income generally a better measure of a person's social class?

Using variable 57 as your column (independent) variable, now choose Fear Walk (variable 208) as your row (dependent) variable. We will use this variable as a rough measure of the kind of neighborhood people live in. Click OK to create the cross-tabulation. Click on Column %. Take a look at the table and then click on Statistics.

Q11: Are the differences in the table statistically significant?

Q12: Toggle back to the table by clicking on column %. Do the data support the following hypothesis? "The higher the social class of a person, the less likely he or she will fear walking alone at night in his or her neighborhood?"

Now change the dependent (row) variable to Own Home?, variable 376. (Note: For questions 13-16, you will only need to change the dependent (row) variable; the independent (column) variable will remain the same.)

Q13: How big a percentage difference is there between the lowest and highest income group for owning one's home? __________

Now change the dependent (row) variable to Newspaper?, variable 215.

Q14: Are there statistically-significant social class differences (as measured by family income) in daily newspaper readership?

Now change the dependent (row) variable to Watch TV?, variable 216?

Q15: How big a percentage difference is there between the lowest and highest income group for watching four hours or more of television a day? _________

Q16: Are these differences statistically significant?

Now change the independent (column) variable to Education, variable 32.

Q17. How big a percentage difference is there in watching four hours or more of television a day for those who did not graduate from high school versus those who have a college degree? _________

As you can see from this example, your findings will depend to a significant degree on what measure of social class you use. While obviously related, education appears to be a stronger predictor of TV watching than income. (You might think about why.) Let's run these two measures of class against each other. Create a cross-tabulation with Education (variable 32) as the independent variable and Income 98 (variable 57) as the dependent (row) variable.

Q18: Why is it more reasonable to make education rather than income the independent variable in this table?

Q19: As education increases, what happens to the modal income category? Describe below.

GSS data don't allow us to test Berger's claim that knowing someone's class allows a sociologist to predict whether they prefer to make love with the lights on or off, but we can address the view that some people have that lower class people have more active sex lives. Run a cross tabulation between Income 98 (variable 57) as the column (independent) variable and Sex Frequency (variable 354) as the row (dependent) variable. Note: For the questions below that ask you to see if the data support a hypothesis, be sure to make sure the data meet the test of statistical significance, in addition to assessing their direction.

Q20: Do these data support the view that lower class people are more sexually active? (Circle one)

(1) Yes, the lower the social class, the more sexually active a person is.
(2) No, there are no statistically-significant differences between socal classes
(3) No, reported sexual activity increases with social class

Let's now take a look at how class may be related to some general outlook and attitudinal variables. Create a cross tabulation of Income 98 (variable 57) and Health (variable 138). Note: I will assume that you know by know how to recognize the independent and dependent variable and how to place them in the cross-tabulation.

Q21: Do these data support the hypothesis that health (measured here by self-reporting) increases with income?

Now change the dependent variable to Pray (variable 121). Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the people, by which he meant that people in the lower classes often turn to religion to relieve them of the hardships of their lives.

Q22: Focusing on those who pray daily, do these data provide support for Marx's thesis? Discuss below.

Now change the dependent variable to Trusted (variable 142).

Q23: Do these data support the proposition that people's level of trust in others increases with social class?

Now change the dependent variable to Income Gap (variable 297).

Q24: Do these data support the hypothesis: The lower the social class, the more likely a person is to think that income differences in society are too large? Explain why or why not.

Now change the dependent variable to Govt Equal (variable 298).

Q25: Do these data support the hypothesis: The higher the social class, the more likely a person is to believe that it is the government's responsibility to reduce income differences?

Change the dependent variable to Vote in 96 (variable 62).

Q26: Describe below the relationship between income and voting. (Note: be sure to state this as a general relationship.)

Q27: What might explain the relationship you just described? Mention at least two possible factors.

Sometimes class is the hidden explanation of relationships that seem to be about other things. A good example involves race. Many things that are commonly attributed to race turn out, on closer examination, really to be about class. Let’s look at an example of this.

Continuing with GSS file you have open, run a cross-tabulation with race (variable 37) as your independent (column) variable and divorce? (variable 12) as your dependent (row) variable. As always, click on column %.

Q28. Is the divorce rate statistically significantly higher for blacks than whites?

But is race really what explains this? We know that a higher proportion of blacks are poor than is the case for whites, and that poor people tend to have higher divorce rates. Might social class be the real explanation?

To find out, we will use family income to control for of social class. If social class rather than race is really what explains the relationship between race and divorce, the statistically significant differences between the divorce rates for whites and blacks will disappear when we control for social class.

To do this, return to the table you just ran, click on the reverse arrow, and highlight and insert family income (variable 57) in the “optional control variables” box. Click OK. Use the control arrows on the bottom left side of the table to view the results for each of the three income groups, clicking on Statistics each time to see if the differences meet the test of statistical significance.

Q29. Keeping in mind that if a table does not meet the test of statistical significance, we must conclude that the differences it shows must be assumed to be a matter of chance: Explain what happens to the relationship between race and divorce when class (family income) is introduced as a control variable in the table you just ran.

Q30. Let's return to the original question about whether social class still matters in the lives of Americans. Do the data that you've reviewed for the questions above support the sociological proposition that social class is still a significant determinant of people's attitudes and behavior? Does social class matter? Discuss below, referring back to the findings in earlier questions.

In the next section, we will use another statistical tool known as the scatterplot. This technique allows us to visualize and measure the relationship between variables that measure properties of geographical units, e.g. nations. We will use this technique to look at the relationship between the level of inequality in a society and its other social attributes. In doing this we will be following up on Marx's general argument that the class structure as a whole--and the degree of inequality within it--is a major determinant of other societal attributes.

Go back to the File Management menu and to Open File. Find the Archive Folder and then follow the path: Ecological>International>Global06. Open this data set. As with any data set, it's important to read the brief description that comes up so you know the kind of data you are dealing with.

Click on Basic Statistics, then Scatterplot. Look over the range of variables.

There are two variables in this data set that directly measure the level of inequality in a society: Variable 183 and Variable 184. Each measures inequality in a different way. Read the variable descriptions and take note of the difference between them. The Gini Index is a measure of inequality that indicates the proportion of all income in the society that would have to be redistributed to make everyone's income equal.

Q31: The range in the variable description for variable 183 shows that the richest 10% of the population in the most unequal country in the Global06 database receives _____ percent of the total income of the society. In contrast, the richest 10% of the population in the least unequal country receives _____ percent of the total income.

Q32: The range in the variable description for variable 184 shows that the least-unequal society in the Global06 database would have to redistribute ________ percent of its income while the most-unequal society would have to redistribute __________ percent of its income to achieve income inequality.

Make Inequality (variable 184) your independent variable and Physical Quality of Life (variable 136) your dependent variable. The PQL is designed to give a better sense of the well-being of a population than per capita income alone. Click OK to create the scatterplot, and then on Reg. Line, which creates a regression line that allows us to see more clearly the direction of the data. Answer the following questions.

Q33: What unit of analysis do the dots in the scatterplot represent?

Q34: Click on the dots that represent cases of high inequality and low PQL. Where are most of them located?

Q35: Click on the dots that represent cases of high inequality and relatively high PQL. Where are most of them located?

Q36: Do the data meet the test of statistical significance?

Q37: Complete the following statement: The ___________________ the level of inequality of a country, measured by the Gini Index, the ____________________ the level of the physical quality of life of its population.

Now change the independent variable to $ Rich 10% (variable 183) and create the scatterplot again, adding in the regression line. You will note that the line has a steeper slope and that the correlation statistic (r) remains negative but has a higher value. This is a reminder that our results will often depend on the measure we use. This measure, by focusing on the national income share of the top 10%, is probably a better measure of highly-polarized inequality than the Gini index.

We will continue to use variable ($ Rich 10%) as we explore some of the other social correlates of inequality. First, change the dependent variable to variable 29, child mortality.

Q38: Explain what conclusions about inequality and child mortality can be drawn from this table (state this as a general relationship between the two variables).

Now change the dependent variable to variable 370, the gender-related development index, which measures how much women reap the benefits of development.

Q39a: This table shows that the higher the level of income inequality of a society, the ____________ the level of gender (female) empowerment in that society.

Q39b: According to this table, what two countries score the highest and the lowest on the gender-related development index?

____________________ and ______________________

Q40: Would you say that the findings in the last nine questions support the sociological proposition, drawn from Marx, that the higher the level of inequality in a society, the worse off the general population will be? Discuss below, referring back to these findings.

Looking Ahead: Class Background Assignment

This assignment has been designed to get you thinking about the many ways in which our social class background and the level of inequality in society matters. As Peter Berger's quotation suggested, and as this exercise has demonstrated, a person's social class is closely related to many aspects of his or her life. In addition, the overall level of inequality in a society is a strong predictor of many quality of life features of people's lives. As you turn to the Class Background Assignment in Module 3, keep in mind the range of factors explored in this exercise as you think about how class and inequality have shaped your life.

Affirmation of Independent Work

Submission of this assignment constitutes a statement on your part that apart from technical help, you completed this assignment on your own and that the answers you have submitted were reached by you, not someone else, and that you understand the serious consequences that can result from plagiarism.

Print Your Name: _____________________________

Signature: __________________________