Essay, Research Paper: Applied Sociology

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


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