Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey Practical exercises UK Data Service 21 September 2016 QUESTION SHEETS Exploring internet use, trust and political affiliation using BSA 2013 1. Finding out about the dataset using documentation Go to the UK Data Service website www.ukdataservice.ac.uk. Find the British Social Attitudes Survey from among the Key surveys via the Get data menu. Click on the title of the survey to go to the Series page. Under DATA ACCESS, click on the survey name and from the list that appears, click on BSA 2013 to go to the catalogue page for the BSA 2013. The catalogue page gives summary information about the survey, contains detailed documentation from the survey providers and links to download the data. TASK: Explore the BSA 2013 catalogue page to find out more about the data Q1. Where do you click to download the data? (but don’t download the data now) Q2. What extra modules were included in the BSA in 2013? Scroll down to find the questionnaire and user guide. If you have time, you can explore these documents to see what they contain. They are searchable using Control-F. Q3. What is the name of the weighting variable in the BSA? 1 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet 2. Exploring survey data online in Nesstar Nesstar is a tool that allows you to explore survey data online. You can also conduct some basic analyses, create graphs and download subsets of the data in Nesstar. Anyone can explore the variables in Nesstar but for most other tasks you must log in to the UK Data Service first. We will use Nesstar to explore a few variables in the BSA 2013. TASK: Explore the British Social Attitudes 2013 data online using Nesstar To get to Nesstar from the BSA 2013 catalogue page, scroll to the top of the page and near the top right, following the link ‘explore online’: To navigate in Nesstar, use the left hand pane. The BSA 2013 should already be open in the list of datasets in the left hand pane and survey information is displayed in the right pane. Click on the + sign next to Variable Description to see the categories of variables in the BSA 2013. Find the variables for internet use in ‘Newspaper Readership and the Internet’. Look at the variable: Does anyone have access to the internet at this address? (click on the question in the left hand pane and information should appear in the right hand pane): Q4. How many answered that they use the internet or World Wide Web for any reason (other than their work)? :Q246 2 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet Q5. Did anyone say they didn’t know or refused to answer? Q6. What are the codes for the ‘Don’t know’ and ‘Refusal’ responses for this variable? ie what are the numbers assigned to those categories? Now go to the next variable (about the number of hours they spend on the internet per week other than for work, Q247): Q7. Did anyone say they didn’t know or refused to answer this question? Q8. What are the codes for the ‘Don’t know’ and ‘Refusal’ responses for this variable? ie what are the numbers assigned to those categories? Q9. What is the range of valid (non-missing) values for this variable? ie what is the smallest number of hours and the largest number of hours? Q10. Looking at the SUMMARY STATISTICS below the table, how many missing cases are there for this question? Q11. Can you see why there are so many missing cases? (Look at the UNIVERSE section at the bottom of the page) 3 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet 3. Using PSPP TASK: Indicates a practical task for you to complete PSPP: Indicates an action required in PSPP 3.1 PSPP PSPP is an open source (free) statistics software that has an interface very similar to SPSS but with a smaller range of features. We have provided PSPP on the laptops for the course today, but you can download it on your own computer from: https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/get.html The data for today’s practical is the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey which is already loaded onto your computer. If you would like to use this data after this course, you can download it from the UK Data Service after a quick registration process: https://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/?sn=7500&type=Data%20catalogue TASK: Open and explore the data in PSPP PSPP: Find PSPP the dataset ‘BSA2013’ on the desktop and double click to open it in PSPP - it will open automatically. 3.2 The data editor Data in PSPP is stored in the Data Editor. This has two views, the Data View and the Variable View. The tabs on the bottom left corner of the data editor allow you to select the view you want . PSPP: Click on the Data View tab at the bottom left of the screen. The Data View shows your data. Each column represents a different variable. Each row contains data from a single respondent (this may be a person, a household, business, school, etc). In BSA 2013, each row is the data for a person. Each cell (or box) contains data from the column variable for the respondent in that row. The shaded cell below shows the Country variable for the 5th person in the dataset: 4 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet PSPP: You can see which country is represented by ‘1’ by pressing the value labels icon in the top menu. PSPP: Click on Variable View tab at the bottom left of the screen. The Variable View provides details of the variables in your dataset. Each row now represents a variable. The Country variable is highlighted below. In Variable View, you can see more information about the type of variable, the name (the short name used to identify the variable), the label (the longer name, often the full question 5 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet from the survey questionnaire), whether it is numeric, or string (text variables), or a date, for example. In the Value Labels column, you can see the values that have been assigned to the different values of a variable, for example which values represent which area in the variable “Government office region 2003 version: Q20” (GOR 2). The Missing column shows any values which have been allocated as missing in PSPP. Any cases with missing values will not be included in the analysis. Measure shows whether a variable is scalar or continuous, such as people’s age, nominal, an unranked categorical variable (e.g. Country), or ordinal, a ranked categorical variable (e.g. a Likert scale of agreement) 1 – Agree strongly 2 – Agree 3 – Neither agree nor disagree 4 – Disagree 5 – Disagree Strongly You can also find out more about the variables by using the Variables window. Use Utilities > Variables…to open the variables dialogue box: The list of variables in the variables box can contain the short name of the variable or the longer and more descriptive label. It is easier to use the name than the label in PSPP commands. 6 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet PSPP: In most dialog boxes, if you see the longer descriptive label, just right-click in the list of variables and choose ‘Prefer Variable Names’. (PSPP in fact always says Prefer Variable Labels but allows you to move between variable names and labels) Quick tip: You can easily find a variable from a long list in a dialog box by clicking into the list and typing the first few letters of the variable. PSPP: Select any variable in the left hand pane, then type ‘cou’ and PSPP will take you to the first variable that starts ‘cou’, in this case, country. 3.2 The Output Window To run an analysis, you can use drop down menus. We will run a simple analysis and look at how we see the results. PSPP: Click on Analyse, then Descriptive Statistics, then Frequencies… You will see the following Frequencies dialog box appear. PSPP: Select GOR2, the Government office region, then click on the arrow to add this to the Variable(s) box and click OK. 7 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet Your results appear in the ‘Output’ window. You can find this via the taskbar at the bottom of your screen. The results of all your statistical analyses appear in the Output window. The Output window below shows a table of responses to a question on region. The left panel lists the analyses you have undertaken to help you navigate through your results. You can export the Output window to save your results. 8 Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey 2013 using PSPP: Question sheet PSPP: Go to ‘Frequencies’ again and you will see that the same Frequencies dialog box appears already filled in exactly as you last used it. TASK: Looking at the data in the data view and variable view, answer the following questions about the data. Q12. How many variables are there in the dataset? Q13. How many cases are there? Q14. What is the coding for the variable RSex (respondent sex)? The codes are the numbers associated with each category. Q15. What is the coding for the variable Country? Q16.