Resource Library

How are earnings determined? Why do some people earn more than others? Does a better job necessarily mean a better salary? In this module, students will attempt to answer these questions and many others by examining factors such as education and occupation in terms of the role they play in determining earnings. Students will also look at the earnings of whites and compare them to the earnings of blacks, Latinos, and Asians. Another consideration will center on the effect of gender. Finally, students will turn their attention to the age of workers in terms what role it plays in determing earnings. Aside from earnings, students will also take a brief look at poverty with respect to the effect race-ethnicity and family structure has on creating and sustaining it.

This module is designed to illustrate the effects of selection bias on the observed relationship between premarital cohabitation and later divorce. It also serves as a review of key methodological concepts introduced in the first part of the course.

This collection of datasets covers many application areas, but are all for time series analysis. The data are in text format.

This module provides an activity were students will attempt to explain how each of the following variables is related to child poverty within the United States: Race, Age, Family Type, Family Size, and Immigrant Status.

Research has shown that marital status and employment are correlates of desistance. That is, adolescents involved with crime were more likely to discontinue offending in adulthood if they were married and had a good job. Most of what criminologists know about the process of desistance from crime is based on a sample of adult males in the 1950's. There is no question that life in America has changed drastically in the past fifty years. Given the importance of examining historical change inherent in the life course perspective, it is important to determine how changes in the social structure over time impact individuals. Therefore, the goals of this data analysis exercise are to examine changes in marriage and employment over the last fifty years. The purposes are to identify the changes that have taken place, and to hypothesize how these changes may affect the process of desistance from crime today.

This module discusses the history and importance of the normal distribution, as well as normal moments, the standard normal distribution, normal probabilities, Z-Scores, and normal quantiles. The applet allows users to compute normal probabilities and quantiles. Three follow-up examples cover cholesterol, male heights, and mean temperatures for various cities in South Carolina.

This resource discusses sample sizes and how they are chosen.

This dataset comes from a study on rats swimming in a T-shaped maze. Rats were given 4 doses of a drug, and their resulting pups swam the maze until they successfully escaped it 3 consecutive times. Questions from this study refer to the dosage of the drug, the number of swims until 3 consecutive successful escapes, and gender differences. A text file version of the data is found in the relation link.

This resource explains the t-distribution and hypothesis testing (informally) using an example on laptop quality.

This dataset comes from a study on dogs 4 doses of a drug. Data on the alkaline phosphatase levels in their blood was collected throughout the experiment. Questions from this study refer to the relationship between dosage of the drug and alkaline blood levels. A text file version of the data is found in the relation link.