Reference no: EM132402417 , Length: word count : 2250
SCLG3702 Quantitative Methods - University of Sydney
Researching Social Attitudes using the World Values Survey
This task will involve using some real social attitudes data collected by the World Values Survey to produce a report. Very often large scale surveys such as the WVS provide researchers with excellent sources of data to empirically investigate a range of sociological topics to discern social patterns about values, attitudes, and opinions. The WVS allows us to investigate attitudes towards a range of social issues in a number of contexts: national, international, and longitudinal.
This assignment will require you to enact the research process to conceive of some research questions and use the data available to construct a piece of quantitative research. Below is a list of topics to investigate with the data
Topics could include but are not limited to:
• Social bases of attitudes towards moral or identity issues: e.g abortion or homosexuality
• Trust in institutions
• Attitudes towards parenting
• Social distance and social tolerance
• Social bases of political action
• Attitudes towards gender and gender roles
• Social bases of attitudes and actions concerning the environment
• Something of your own choosing (must be approved by LIC or tutor)
Data
Data is from the World Values Survey. You have the choice to make your study a national study (Australia only), comparative (comparing two or more countries), or longitudinal (consider attitudes over time by using data from more than one wave of the WVS).
Specific research tasks
You need to:
• Identify and operationalise key concepts
• Identify valid measures of dependent and independent variables in the survey
• Design a conceptual model linking various social attributes to attitudinal positions
• Produce some research questions and or hypotheses
• Argue why the tests and models you have chosen to use are the most appropriate method for investigating your questions
• Create usable data using SPSS
o Recode variables where necessary
o Create scales where necessary
• Analyse the data
o Describe the sample
o Provide graphs and charts where relevant
o Produce descriptive statistics about the variables
o Produce cross tabulations, scatterplots, or regression models and discuss the relationships between variables
• Write up the results using the data to answer the questions you have posed
o Introduction
o Methods
o Findings
o Discussion/Conclusion
o Minimum of 8 scholarly references books, book chapters, and sociological articles from journals (websites don't count).