Writing Quantitative Results

 Abstract

After all sessions, meetings, slides, and videos of this class with Dr. Cone, and our classmates, here is one of my research questions.

The data set I am using in this research is gss.sav (attached!), which is a general social survey from the CTU library. Some of the variables in this data set are recorded, some are created to make it easier to use, and the data is from the national research opinion.

Quantitative research question, data set, and scenario

The research question is, "Do Americans think that abortion should be legal in the United States of America for any reason?" I chose this research question because it is the freshest trend in our county, in which our supreme court is now involved. This question has a broad scope with a clear concept to find the American opinion about abortion.

We use a1_abany “ABORTION IF WOMAN WANTS FOR ANY REASON to measure Americans' opinions about abortion. All respondents were asked if they think abortion should be legal for any reason. On the other hand, we use d5_sex RESPONDENTS SEX for the CROSSTABS in SPSS to explore a Chi-Square test, and all related files, including the SPSS output, are attached. In SPSS, we run the test by going to (Analyze > Descriptive Statistics > Crosstabs) and selecting the row and column variables. We click Statistics, check Chi-square, then click Continue, and (Optional) Click Cells. Under Counts, check boxes for Observed and Expected and under Residuals, click Unstandardized, and Continue." (CTU, 2022)

We are using the Chi-Square test to solve our problem in this article because the Chi-Square test is the best tool to statistically analyze and compare the observed results with the expected results. The test result will aid us in determining if there is a difference between observed data and expected data due to chance or is due to a relationship between the variables of our study.

This is the SPSS code to create the CROSSTABS:  “CROSSTABS   /TABLES=a1_abany BY d5_sex /FORMAT=AVALUE TABLES /CELLS=COUNT COLUMN.” The following table shows approximately 47% of men think abortion should be legal for any reason, while 44% of women believe the same. The difference of 3.6% seems small, and we will talk about that in our hypotheses analysis.

 

Research Hypotheses and Chi-Square test

Our research hypothesis is to prove that sex and abortion are related to each other. In other words, we expect that the statement "sex and abortion are related" is true, and we need to prove it indirectly. Our second assumption is the null hypothesis, which says sex and abortion are unrelated and are independent variables. Therefore, our research will reject the null hypotheses if there is evidence in support. So, we will test the null hypotheses.

The value of Chi-Square is "2.147", and the degree of freedom (df) is 1 which shows how many numbers in our grid are independent. There are "766" males and "898" females, and 752 of them think that abortion should be legal for any reason, and 912 believe it should not be legal for any reason.

Conclusion

The two-tailed significance value is 0.143 which is more significant than "0.05", and we cannot reject the null hypotheses. Therefore, we do not have significant evidence to support our research hypotheses. Instead, we conclude that there is not enough evidence to suggest an association between sex and the legal reasons for abortion in the United States of America.

 This Chi-Square using a cross-tabulation statistic test, proved that the group of "sex" and a group of "abortion if the woman wants for any reason" are independent.

References

CTU, (2022). Colorado Technical University. Student’s restricted panel. Retrieved 2022, from Colorado Technical University restricted area of assignments.