Applied Sociology Essay, Research Paper

The results I found for attitudes towards suicide were what was expected.

I ran the significance values for level of education (degree) and for age. However

my disk contracted a virus and I lost my data set and was not able to run

significance values for my other independent variables (age, income). What I

found was that attitudes towards suicide were affected by degree and age.

Degree was the most powerful predictor of attitudes towards suicide. I

used the Somers?d method because both the dependent variable and the

independent variable had nominal values. The Somers?d value was .187 and was

significant at the 001 level. This means that there is a 18.7 or 19% reduction in

error in predicting attitudes towards suicide by knowing the respondent?s highest

degree earned. The higher someone?s education the more likely that they can see

suicide acceptable in at least one situation. Table 1 shows the extremes of the

degree category to display the strong correlation. We can see, of the respondents

who had less than a High school Diploma only 54.6% of them could not see

suicide acceptable in any of the four situations. Out of all the respondents who

earned a high school diploma only 41% of them could not deem suicide

acceptable in any situation and out of all the respondents who have higher than a

high school diploma only 30% of them could not accept it in any situation.

The Chi Square could not be interpreted because there was not 5 people in

every cell. Technically in this circumstance we can not reject the null hypothesis,

but there was only one cell with three and we found that there is a 19%

significance value so we can assume that three is a relationship between our

independent and dependent variables.

TABLE 1. ATTITUDES TOWARDS SUICIDE AS COMPARED WITH

HIGHEST DEGREE

EARNED.

Age was another strong predictor of attitudes towards suicide. Once again

we used the Somers?d value. The Somers?d value was .142 and was significant at

the .001 level. There was a 14% reaction in predicting attitudes towards suicide

by knowing the respondents age. The older someone is the more likely they are to

be against suicide in most situations. The younger the respondent is they are more

likely to feel it is acceptable in at least one situation. As we can see from Table 2

of the respondents between the ages of 64-89a total of 57.4% of them were

completely against suicide in every situation. At the same time, only 32% of the

respondents between the ages of 18-30 were completely against it.

TABLE 2. ATTITUDES TOWARDS SUICIDE AS COMPARED WITH AGE.

Out of the respo0ndents who fell between the oldest and youngest age

groups they were pretty much equally divided. They could cover the gray areas by

seeing suicide acceptable in one or two possible situations. My personal opinion

is that the older you are the more hardships and bad situations you have

overcome. Everyone has had a point in there life where they thought things

couldn?t get worse and you have to learn to overcome obstacles. Older people

have lived through many bad situations so they can not see suicide as excusable

it?s just an easy way out.

APPLIED SOCIOLOGY

ASSIGNMENT #3