Department of Management

King’s College London

7SSMN405 RESEARCH METHODS IN THE PUBLIC SERVICES

Take-home test
answer guidelines

Deadline: 23h59m on Thursday, 4th December 2014

Format: Word or PDF file via email to sonia.goncalves@kcl.ac.uk

Word Limit: 1,200 words maximum

Weight: 10% of module mark

Table 1 describes a dataset taken from a survey of students sampled over 3 semesters –
spring and fall 2013 and spring 2014 – taking a Statistics course at a NYU. The data was
analysed using a linear regression model that explored the relationship between lecture
attendance and student performance. Table 2 reports the results of the regression analysis.

Questions:

(a) Interpret the estimated coefficients of variables SATmath and male.

The model predicts that controlling for all other variables 1 point change in the
satmath score is associated with a 0.011 pp change (in the same direction) in student’s
grade; controlling for all other vars in model prediction is that males get a grade 0.736
pp higher than female students.

(b) Compute the standard error for variable male. Is this variable statistically significant
(assume 5% significance level)? Cite the relevant statistics to justify your answer.

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s.e.= estimated beta / t-stat = 0.736/0.8

Not statistically significant.

Look at magnitude of t-stat or, more directly, at p-value=0.4 (explain meaning of this,
i.e. we cannot reject hypothesis of null effect at conventional significance levels).

(c) Why is variable hoursstudy included in the model if the objective is to assess the
impact on attendance on grades?

Hours is included to control for the amount of effort that a student puts into studying
for the course.
Further, if a student has missed some lectures (e.g. because of illness) they could make
up for it by increasing the amount of private study.

(d) According to the model, does lecture attendance improve students’ grades? Justify
your answer.

Starting with the main variables of interest, we can see that skip12 and skip34 are not
statistically significant, but that skip56 and skip 9+ are significant (at 5% sig. level),
andskip78 is borderline significant (t-statistic of -1.83; p-value 0.068).

The results tell us that if you skip five or more classes your grade will suffer. For
example, the coefficient on skip56 is -3.228, which can be interpreted as saying that
with 5 or 6 absences the student’s grade would be expected to fall by 3.23 percentage
points (compared to a student who did not miss any class).

In essence, statistically speaking it does not matter if you miss a small number of
classes (4 or less). But it matters if you skip a lot of classes.

This result seems plausible. Missing a few classes does not make a huge impact but
missing a lot of the course is usually a problem.

(e) How well does the model explain the data? Can you think of any possible omitted
variables?

The adjusted R2 for this model is 0.435 which means that 43.5% of the variance in the
dependent variable is explained by the model. This means that there are a number of

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variables missing from the model that help to explain the variation in student grades
for a course of this type.

For example, a measure of motivation; or whether English is student’s mother tongue.

(Any other sensible potentially missing variables mentioned by students would be
fine.)

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 Table 1: Data description

Variable Description Mean

grade student course grade (%) 72.234

skip12 1 if student had 1 or 2 absences; 0 otherwise 0.277
skip34 1 if student had 3 or 4 absences; 0 otherwise 0.159
skip56 1 if student had 5 or 6 absences; 0 otherwise 0.162
skip78 1 if student had 7 or 8 absences; 0 otherwise 0.061
skip9+ 1 if student had 9 or more absences; 0 otherwise 0.104
SATmath score in pre-university maths test 515.647
SATverbal score in pre-university verbal reasoning test 466.96
hourstudy hours of statistics studied per week 2.4
hourswork hours worked per week in a job 7.818
parents 1 if at least one parent has university degree; 0 otherwise 0.726
white 1 if white; 0 otherwise 0.951
male 1 if male; 0 otherwise 0.621
Note: SAT scores range between minimum 200 and maximum 800 points.

Table 2: Results of OLS regression

Variable Coefficient t-statistic p-value

skip12 0.465 0.38 0.704

skip34 -1.538 1.11 0.268
skip56 -3.228 2.29 0.023
skip78 -3.475 1.83 0.068
skip9+ -3.521 2.12 0.035
SATmath 0.011 1.97 0.050
SATverbal 0.014 2.35 0.019
hourstudy 0.093 0.41 0.682
hourswork -0.049 1.28 0.202
parents 0.695 1.83 0.068
white 4.524 2.33 0.020
male 0.736 0.8 0.424
intercept 33.919 3.94 0.000
Adj-R2 0.435
No. of obs. 346