SOC In this exercise, you will use SPSS to get measures of central tendency for several different variables in the States data set, which is available from the website for this text.

● Find and click the SPSS icon on your desktop.

● Load the States data set.

● From the menu bar across the top of the SPSS window, click Analyze, Descriptive Statistics, and Frequencies.

● Find these variables in the box on the left of the

“Frequencies” window: FamPoor09 (percentage of all families in the state below the poverty line), ForBorn (percentage of the population in the state that was born outside the United States in 2009), and TeenBirthRate (births per 1000 females age 15–19, 2011). Click the arrow to move the variable names into the box on the right.

● Click the Statistics button and, under “Central Tendency,” select Mean, Median, and Mode. Click Continue to return to the “Frequencies” window.

● Make sure the box next to the “Display frequency tables” option is not checked. We are interested only in the summary statistics, not in the tables.

● Click OK.

a. Write a paragraph analyzing and summarizing the three variables. Are any of the distributions skewed? In what direction?

b. Select one of the skewed variables and skim the scores of the variable in the SPSS Data Editor to find the outlier(s). That is, find the column in which the scores of the variable are stored and skim the scores looking for especially high scores

(if the skew is positive) or low scores (if the skew is negative). What sociological factors might account for these very high or low scores?