Material Detail

The goal of this exercise is to think about a concept typically called religious fundamentalism and to consider how we might measure this concept using data from the General Social Survey. Once we have decided on a measure, then we will explore the relationship between this variable and various forms of religious behavior and opinions on various social issues. The data set used in this exercise is gss0204_subset_for_classes.sav which is a combination of the 2002 and 2004 General Social Surveys. (Some of the variables in the GSS have been recoded to make them easier to use and some new variables have been created.) The data have been weighted according to the instructions from the National Opinion Research Center. This exercise uses RECODE to combine categories in existing variables, SELECT CASES to select out a subset of cases, and CROSSTABS to explore the relationships among variables. In CROSSTABS, students are asked to use percentages, Chi Square, and an appropriate measure of association.