Chapter 8, Problem 93CP

Working mother In response to the statement on a recent General Social Survey, “A preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works,” suppose the response categories (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) had counts (104, 370, 665, 169). Scores (2, 1, −1, −2) were assigned to the four categories to treat the variable as quantitative. Software reported

1. a. Explain what this choice of scoring assumes about relative distances between categories of the scale.
2. b. Based on this scoring, how would you interpret the sample mean of −0.325?
3. c. Explain how you could also make an inference about proportions for these data.