Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

556 Chapter 19
people over 70? What is the average number of children in each household?
How many people in your sample have extreme views on some key attitude
questions?
Table 19.2 shows the raw data for five variables and 30 respondents. These
data come from a telephone survey that Gery Ryan, Stephen Borgatti, and I
did of 609 adults in the United States (Bernard et al. 1999). Part of the survey
was about people’s attitudes toward environmental activism. (The 30 respondents
in table 19.2 are a random sample of the 609.)
The first variable, gender, is a nominal, or qualitative variable. The
respondents were men and women over the age of 18, selected randomly from
across the 48 continental states of the United States. Men were coded as 1
(GENDER male); women were coded as 2 (GENDER female). In statistics,
qualitative description entails assigning numbers to classes of things.
Those numbers, though—like 1 for male and 2 for female—are just substitute
names for ‘‘male’’ and ‘‘female.’’ They are not quantities. The average of the
1s and 2s in the column for GENDER in table 19.2 is 1.4, but that’s no more
helpful than knowing the average telephone number in New York City.
The second two variables are items that Kempton et al. (1995) used in their
study of environmental values in America. My colleagues and I wanted to see
if we could replicate their results. These ordinal variables are responses, on a
scale of 1 to 5, to two statements:
Americans are going to have to drastically reduce their level of consumption over
the next few years.
1 strongly disagree
2 disagree
3 neutral
4 agree
5 strongly agree
Environmentalists wouldn’t be so gung-ho if it were their jobs that were threatened.
1 strongly disagree
2 disagree
3 neutral
4 agree
5 strongly agree
I’ve labeled the responses to the two items REDUCE and GUNGHO in
table 19.2. Notice that these two items are sort of opposites. The more you
agree with REDUCE, the stronger your support for environmentalist issues is
likely to be. But the more you agree with GUNGHO, the weaker your support
for environmentalist issues is likely to be. If we want bigger numbers, like 4