Analysis Exercises
The online data analysis system used on this site uses a system called Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA), developed and maintained by the Computer-assisted Survey Methods Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Documentation for SDA can be found on their Web site.
You may choose to explore the SDA independently, or try the following exercises:
A. Two-variable relationships
The following two exercises illustrate how to create basic two-variable tables and how to interpret the tables.
- Exercise 1 (Party identification and presidential vote)
- Exercise 2 (Marital status and congressional vote)
B. Three-variable relationships
These exercise illustrate how to further examine a two-variable relationship by introducing a control variable into the analysis.
1. Examining potential extraneous or confounding variables
- Exercise 3 (Attitude toward social security privatization and presidential vote)
- Exercise 4 (Attitude toward Bush handling of Iraq and presidential vote)
2. Examining potential intervening variables
- Exercise 5 (Personal financial situation and presidential vote)
- Exercise 6 (Gender and congressional vote)
3. Examining conditional relationships
- Exercise 7 (Abortion attitude, presidential vote, and issue importance)
- Exercise 8 (Abortion attitude, presidential vote, and perception of candidate positions)
4. Joint influence of two independent variables
- Exercise 9 (Candidate character and presidential vote)
- Exercise 10 (Income, religiosity, and presidential vote)
C. Conducting your own research
This discussion provides some guidance for using this dataset for more elaborate research projects.
