The Social Structures Of Women - 1038 Words

Data Set 1 Studies have suggested that students who sit closer to the front tend to be more successful (Cuseo, Fecas, Thompson). There is also evidence that fewer women than men make it to the most upper level careers (â€Å"Women in Leadership†). With this knowledge, I hypothesized that women sit on the back row more often than the front row. The social structures that cause women to keep from these careers may also cause them to sit farther back in class, being less engaged during school. Women at BYU especially are socially pressured to stay in the home, so they will likely respond to this and be less engaged in school rather than preparing for a career. I expect front row seating to be negatively correlated with females. I collected my data†¦show more content†¦The data carries some validity because it was taken in a class required by two majors, and the class contains both men and women. Validity is also provided because the people did not know that they were being observed, so the behavior I observed was unaffected by my data collection. I used column percentages to compare the variables and test for substantive significance. I used this test because both of my variables yielded categorical data. 53.6 percent of males chose to sit on the front row and 53.8 percent of females chose to as well. There is no difference between these values, so the data is not substantively significant. This test shows that in the class I observed, the choice to sit in the front or back rows is not affected by a person’s gender. I used the computer to run a Chi square test to determine statistical significance because both my dependent and independent variables were dichotomous. It was unnecessary to use comparison of means because both variables were dummy variables. I expect these variables to be positively correlated. The Chi square value of 0.987 yielded a p value of 0.3205, so I can reject the null hypothesis with only 68 percent confidence; therefore I fail to reject the null hypothesis. This means that gender is not a significant factor in seat choice. With more data the relationship could be tested more effectively and with more validity, but my research has been