Your research question should explore factors related to health or wellbeing. You should decide for yourself (within the limits afforded by the data) which aspect of health or wellbeing you wish to focus on and clearly explain this in your report.
The dataset contains a wide range of wellbeing variables as well as a wide range of variables that we might expect to be related to physical and mental health, including but not limited to:
Employment and financial security (economic activity, satisfaction with household income etc.) Personality (extraversion, openness etc)
Living arrangements (living with parents / children / spouse, tenure etc)
Local environment (feel part of community, want to move, urban or rural etc.) Social networks and support (number of close friends, able to visit family etc)
Socio-economic and demographic markers (ethnicity, country of birth, sex, age etc)
You will need to identify a research question which can be explored by looking at the relationship between 3 variables – one dependent and two exploratory variables.
You should use existing literature, the data document and the data themselves to come up with a suitable research question and hypothesis. The literature should be used in order to help you generate a plausible and justifiable research question. It is not necessary to read extensively as the focus of your effort should be the analysis.
The module discussion forum contains some suggested readings if you are looking for a place to start.
- Conduct your analysis
The analysis and the report must follow the guidelines provided below. Please pay careful attention to cover all the requirements specified for the SPSS analysis and for the structure and content of the report. NB: all the techniques needed for the data analysis for this assignment were covered in the SPSS practical classes – please consult the relevant practical hand-outs where required for reminders.
3.1: Your analysis should be appropriately weighted (we weighted analysis for the first time in the week 7 practical). When weights are applied this should be noted in your report.
3.2: You should produce and present frequency tables for each variable to illustrate the distribution of each variable. You should identify in your report any features which are of interest or importance. (This was covered in week 7).
3.3: Make at least one modification to your data in order to make it more suitable for your analysis. This modification should either be a recode, compute or filter. For example you may choose to recode a detailed variable into a new variable with fewer categories in order to create an easier to understand variable. You might choose to simplify a variable after you have demonstrated how it is related to the other variables. For example, you could choose to use a more detailed version of a variable for one and two way tables and a less detailed version in the three way table. You should be explain any changes you have made and justify these in your report. (Modifying data was covered in week 9). Strong candidates will also include the syntax they used to make the modification as an appendix.
3.3: Produce two two-way tables demonstrating whether there appears to be a relationship between the dependent variable and each of the explanatory variables. You should add appropriate percentages to enable comparisons to be made between the groups defined by your explanatory variable. (This was covered in week 8).
3.4: You should produce one stacked bar chart to demonstrate the relationship between your dependent variable and one of the explanatory variables. (week 8)
3.5: You should conduct chisquared tests for your two way tables. This should be interpreted in the report. (week 10)
3.6: You should produce one three way table demonstrating whether the relationship between the dependent and explanatory changes when you control for the other explanatory variable (week 8). You may need to recode one or more of your variables to prevent this from becoming unwieldy. This should also be supported with a chi-squared test. You should interpret your findings.
Each element of the analysis will be marked individually. If any element is omitted it is not possible to give marks for that element. It is essential to follow the instructions above carefully and be sure to include all of the components to the best of your ability in order to avoid dropping marks.
