Creating and Interpreting Contingency Tables

Creation Year
Thursday, September 14, 2023 - 12:00
Author(s)

Meredith Gilbertson, Bowling Green State University

Learning Goals

Skills
You will use basic analysis software (WebCHIP) to access and analyze data.
You will generate relative frequency distributions in WebCHIP.
You will generate contingency tables in WebCHIP.
You will interpret frequencies, row percentages, and column percentages.
You will describe the results of analyses.

Substance
You will apply course concepts to understand whether and how child poverty varies by family type and one other variable.

Context for Use

This activity is used in an introductory statistics class that is required for sociology majors. This activity looks at demographic information and child poverty in the United States.

Description and Teaching Materials

Creating and Interpreting Contingency Tables Module

Contingency tables (also called cross tabs, two-way, or bivariate tables) allow us to summarize and analyze relationships between two qualitative variables. In this module, students will use a customized data set made from the 2000 U.S. Census. Students will access and analyze data using WebCHIP software found at DataCounts!. This includes creating relative frequency distributions and contingency tables, with a focus on percentage of children in poverty in the U.S. in 2000. Students will interpret the tables, providing written descriptions.

Teaching Notes and Tips

This activity uses one customized data set made from the 2000 U.S. Census. It guides students through data manipulation using WebCHIP software found at DataCounts!. To open WebCHIP with the dataset for the activity, please see instructions and links in the exercise documents under teaching materials. For more information on how to use WebCHIP, see the How To section on the DataCounts! website.

References and Resources

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Reuse License
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