Skill
- Using software to access and analyze data from ACS
- Identifying independent and dependent variables
- Employing control variables
- Learning how to construct, read, and interpret bivariate tables displaying frequencies and percentages
- Creating visual tools representing quantitative data in the form of charts or graphs
- Identifying trends of educational attainment over time
- Using real world data to enhance and support key course concepts
Substance
- Describing trends of educational attainment in the US
- Applying sociological perspectives to understand trends of education attainment by gender and race
- Using a sociological imagination to relate education trends to broader social contexts
The module contains instruments for pre/post assessment.
In this exercise you will explore trends of educational attainment from 1950 to 2008. The purpose of this assignment is to give you some familiarity with how sociologists use datasets to both describe and analyze the social world. Your task is to use data from the 1950 to 2008 ACS to present population change in both tabular and graphical form. You will access that data through an online data analysis program called WebCHIP. In class I will demonstrate exactly what you have to do. You can help one another with the computing part, but you are honor-bound to fill in the sheet on your own.
Instructions on how to gather data from the census and ACS data using WebCHIP are included.