Step 1: Dr. Spockette is a developmental psychologist whose interest is in parenting styles.She is particularly interested in how the styles parents use for their children can impact their children's politics when they reach adulthood. She just finished collecting data for an 18-year-long study, but it's been a long time since graduate school, and she needs help interpreting her findings. She sent over a table of her betas and p values that she'd like to understand.

For these data, the dependent variable is political conservatism at the child's age 18. All time periods in the table refer to the age of the child.

Predictor:	beta	p
Child's gender (1 = male 2 = female)	0.11	.01
Child's ethnicity (1 = non-white 2 = white, non-Hispanic)	0.17	<.01
Cognitive skills at 54 months	0.05	.30
Socioeconomic status at 54 months	0.09	.07
Authoritarian parenting attitudes at 1 month	0.16	<.01
Egalitarian parenting attitudes at 1 month	0.13	<.01
Maternal sensitivity from 1 to 54 months	0.02	.77

1) Describe what the beta for "child's gender" means.

2) Describe what the beta for "Socioeconomic status at 54 months" means.

3) Describe what the beta for "Authoritarian parenting attitudes at 1 month" means.

Step 2: Think of the four validities in relation to association claims and the criteria for causal claims.

4) Ask a question about the construct validity of two of the key variables in this study.

5) Ask a question about the external validity of this study.

6) What statement can you make about the internal validity of this study? Would an experiment be better? Why or why not?

7) Does this study establish temporal precedence? Why or why not?

8) What additional third variables might you want to control for, if you were interested in the relationship between parental attitudes and political conservatism? List at least one.

Step 3: Dr. Spockette appreciates your interpretation work thus far but would like you to ask for a second and third opinion of other folks at RM Consulting.

9) One colleague looks at these data and says, "The only reason authoritarian parenting is associated with adult conservatism is just incomericher parents are probably more authoritarian, and richer parents are going to have more conservative kids." What do you say in response?

10) A different colleague looks at these data and says, "The only reason authoritarian parenting is associated with adult conservatism could be parent's conservatismconservative parents are probably more authoritarian, and conservative parents are going to have more conservative kids." What do you say in response?