1 / 11

Critical Thinking and Testing Hypotheses Involving Three Variables

Critical Thinking and Testing Hypotheses Involving Three Variables. Edward Nelson and Elizabeth Nelson California State University Fresno Sociology. Church Attendance and Opinion on Pornography Laws.

strom
Download Presentation

Critical Thinking and Testing Hypotheses Involving Three Variables

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Critical Thinking and Testing Hypotheses Involving Three Variables Edward Nelson and Elizabeth Nelson California State University Fresno Sociology

  2. Church Attendance and Opinion on Pornography Laws • Previously we showed that those who attended church frequently are more likely to favor laws against the distribution of pornography to everyone regardless of age. • We also observed that this does not prove that a causal relationship exists between these two variables.

  3. Considering Other Variables That Might Affect the Relationship • We know there are other variables related to church attendance and feelings about pornography. • For example, women are more likely to attend church than men and also more likely to feel pornography ought to be illegal. • Let’s add the variable sex into our analysis by creating two crosstabulations – (1) church attendance and sex and (2) opinions on pornography laws and sex.

  4. Table -- Church Attendance by Sex

  5. Table -- Pornography Laws by Sex

  6. Interpretation • Women are considerably more likely to feel that pornography ought to be illegal for everyone. • Women are somewhat more likely to attend church frequently.

  7. Adding a Third Variable (Control Variable) • Perhaps the reason that those who attend church more frequently are more likely to feel that pornography ought to be illegal to everyone is that women attend church more frequently than men and women are also more likely to feel that pornography ought to be illegal for everyone. • Let’s check on this possibility.

  8. Pornography by Church Attendance--Males Only

  9. Pornography by Church Attendance--Females Only

  10. Interpretation • If the relationship had been due to sex, then the relationship between attendance and feelings about pornography laws would have disappeared or decreased when we held sex constant. • However, the relationship did not disappear. • Therefore, the relationship is not due to sex. It might, of course, be due to some other variable.

  11. Conclusion • The analysis supports our hypothesis that the religious are more likely to feel that pornography ought to be illegal for everyone. • This relationship is not due to sex. It is not spurious when we hold sex constant. • However, it might be spurious when we hold some other variable constant. • We can never prove causality. We can only make a causal connection more credible.

More Related