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Contents vii
The Null Hypothesis: No Difference between Means 223

The Research Hypothesis: A Difference between Means 224
Sampling Distribution of Differences between Means 225
Testing Hypotheses with the Distribution of Differences between Means 228
Levels of Significance 232
Standard Error of the Difference between Means 237
Testing the Difference between Means 238
Box 7.1 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Test of Difference between Means 239
Comparing Dependent Samples 244

Box 7.2 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Test of Difference between Means
for Same Sample Measured Twice 244
Box 7.3 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Test of Difference between Means
for Matched Samples 247
Two-Sample Test of Proportions 249
Box 7.4 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Test of Difference between
Proportions 250
One-Tailed Tests 252
Box 7.5 • Step-by-Step Illustration: One-Tailed Test of Means for Same
Sample Measured Twice 254
Box 7.6 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Independent Groups,
One-Tailed Test 256
Effect Size 258
Box 7.7 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Cohen’s d 259
Requirements for Testing the Difference between Means 260

Summary 261
Terms to Remember 262
Questions and Problems 262
Computer Exercises 275
8 Analysis of Variance 276
The Logic of Analysis of Variance 278

The Sum of Squares 279
Mean Square 286
viii Contents
The F Ratio 287

Box 8.1 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Analysis of Variance 290
A Multiple Comparison of Means 294

Box 8.2 • Step-by-Step Illustration: HSD for Analysis of Variance 295
Two-Way Analysis of Variance 296
Box 8.3 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Two-Way Analysis of Variance 303
Requirements for Using the F Ratio 307
Summary 307
9 Nonparametric Tests of Significance 319
One-Way Chi-Square Test 320

Box 9.1 • Step-by-Step Illustration: One-Way Chi-Square 323
Two-Way Chi-Square Test 325

Box 9.2 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Two-Way Chi-Square
Test of Significance 331
Box 9.3 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Comparing Several Groups 335
The Median Test 341

Box 9.4 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Median Test 341
Mann-Whitney U Test 344

Box 9.5 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Mann-Whitney U Test 345
Kruskal-Wallis Test 347

Box 9.6 • Step-by-Step: Kruskal-Wallis Test 347
Summary 349
Looking at the Larger Picture: Testing for Differences 363
Contents ix
Part IV • From Decision Making to Association 365
10 Correlation 367
Strength of Correlation 367

Direction of Correlation 369
Curvilinear Correlation 370
The Correlation Coefficient 370
Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient 371
Box 10.1 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient 377
The Importance of Scatter Plots 379

Partial Correlation 382
Summary 388
11 Regression Analysis 400
The Regression Model 401

Interpreting the Regression Line 406
Prediction Errors 408
Regression and Pearson’s Correlation 413
Regression and Analysis of Variance 414
Box 11.1 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Regression Analysis 416
Multiple Regression 418
Logistic Regression 428
Summary 433
x Contents
12 Nonparametric Measures of Correlation 444
Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation Coefficient 444

Box 12.1 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation
Coefficient 450
Goodman’s and Kruskal’s Gamma 452
Box 12.2 • Step-by-Step Illustration: Goodman’s
and Kruskal’s Gamma 453
Correlation Coefficient for Nominal Data Arranged in a 2 : 2 Table 457
Correlation Coefficients for Nominal Data in Larger than 2 : 2 Tables 459
Elaboration 462
Summary 464
Looking at the Larger Picture: Measuring Association 475
Part V • Applying Statistics 477
13 Choosing Statistical Procedures for Research Problems 479
Research Situations 483

Research Solutions 499
Appendixes 509
APPENDIX A Using SPSS and the General Social Survey 511
APPENDIX B StatCrunch 532
APPENDIX C Tables 545
APPENDIX D List of Formulas 560
APPENDIX E A Review of Some Fundamentals of Mathematics 568
Glossary 573
Answers to Problems 578
Index 589
Preface
New to this edition:

• New discussion of Meta-Analysis in Chapter 1
• New introduction to the concept and calculation of Coefficient of Variation in
Chapter 4
• New introduction to the One Sample Test of Means in Chapter 7
• New introduction to the concept and calculation of Effect Size in Chapter 7
• New discussion of the Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis Test in Chapter 9
• New discussion of Elaboration in Chapter 12
• Expanded discussions of Non-Sampling Error, Standard Error, Partial Correlation,
and Multicollinearity
• Updated Examples and Exercises throughout the text
• Supplementary Computer Exercises that utilize a subset of the 2010 General Social
Survey
The twelfth edition of Elementary Statistics in Social Research provides an introduction to
statistics for students in sociology, criminal justice, political science, social work and related
fields. This book is not intended to be a comprehensive reference work on statistical meth-
ods. On the contrary, our first and foremost objective is to be understandable to a broad range
of students, particularly those who may not have a strong background in mathematics.
Through several editions, Elementary Statistics in Social Research has under-
gone refinements and improvements in response to instructor and student feedback.
For this revision, we have added several new techniques, including meta-analysis (Chapter
1), coefficient of variation (Chapter 4), one sample test of means and effect size (Chapter 7),
Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test (Chapter 9), logistic regression (Chapter 11),
and elaboration (Chapter 12). We have expanded the discussion of several topics, includ-
ing non-sampling error, standard error, partial correlation, and multicollinearity. We have
updated examples and exercises throughout the text. Finally, the supplementary computer
exercises in this edition utilize a subset of the 2010 General Social Survey (GSS) available
for download from www.pearsonhighered.com/careers. For those instructors who do not
teach with computer software, however, this feature can be easily excluded.
This edition continues to contain a number of pedagogical features. Most notably, de-
tailed step-by-step illustrations of statistical procedures continue to be located at important
points throughout the text. We have again attempted to provide clear and logical explana-
tions for the rationale and use of statistical methods in social research. And, as in the ear-
lier editions, we have included a number of end-of-chapter questions and problems. Students
xi
xii Preface
sometimes get lost in the trees of statistics, without seeing the forest. To counter this tendency,
we have ended each part of the text with a section entitled “Looking at the Larger Picture,”
which carries the student through the entire research process based on hypothetical data.
Following a detailed overview in Chapter 1, the text is divided into five parts.
Part One (Chapters 2 through 4) introduces the student to the most common methods for
describing and comparing data. Part Two (Chapters 5 and 6) serves a transitional purpose.
Beginning with a discussion of the basic concepts of probability, Part Two leads the stu-
dent from the topic of the normal curve as an important descriptive device to the use of the
normal curve as a basis for generalizing from samples to populations. Continuing with this
decision-making focus, Part Three (Chapters 7 through 9) contains several well-known
tests of significance. Part Four (Chapters 10 through 12) includes procedures for obtaining
correlation coefficients and an introduction to regression analysis. Finally, Part Five con-
sists of an important chapter (Chapter 13) in which students learn, through examples, the
conditions for applying statistical procedures to various types of research problems.
The text provides students with background material for the study of statistics. An Intro-
duction to using SPSS, StatCrunch™, a set of statistical tables, a review of basic mathematics,
and a list of formulas are located in appendixes at the end of the book. Students will also find
a glossary of terms and answers to the end-of-chapter problems at the end of the book.
Instructor Resources
Instructor supplements include an Instructors Manual, a solutions manual containing step-
by-step calculations for the end-of-chapter problems, the General Social Survey data set,
a companion statistics calculator (ABCalc), Powerpoint slides featuring step-by-step solu-
tions to problems, and a test generator.
To access supplementary materials online, instructors need to request an instructor
access code. Go to www.pearsonhighered.com/irc, where you can register for an instructor
access code. Within 48 hours of registering you will receive a confirming e-mail including
an instructor access code. Once you have received your code, locate your text in the online
catalog and click on the Instructor Resources button on the left side of the catalog product
page. Select a supplement and a log in page will appear. Once you have logged in, you can
access instructor material for all Pearson textbooks.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the many reviewers of this and previous editions of the text who have
given us countless insightful and helpful suggestions. We also want to thank instructors who
generously shared with us any errors they located in our problems and illustrations. We ac-
knowledge the outstanding work of Chris Prener and Chris Hovey who assisted us in updat-
ing and improving problem sets, and Adam Stearn who constructed several of the book’s
supplementary materials. In addition, we benefitted tremendously from the skillful editorial
assistance of Jenna Savage. We also thank the National Opinion Research Council (NORC)
for permission to use the 2010 General Social Survey. Finally, we note the important role of
our personal computers, without “whose” assistance this book would not have been possible.
Jack Levin
James Alan Fox
David R. Forde
1
Why the Social Researcher
Uses Statistics
The Nature of Social Research Summary

Why Test Hypotheses? Terms to Remember
The Stages of Social Research Questions and Problems
Using Series of Numbers to Do Social Research Computer Exercises
The Functions of Statistics Looking at the Larger Picture: A Student Survey
A little of the social scientist can be found in all of us. Almost daily, we take educated
guesses concerning the future events in our lives in order to plan for new situations or experi-
ences. As these situations occur, we are sometimes able to confirm or support our ideas; other
times, however, we are not so lucky and must face the sometimes unpleasant consequences.
Consider some familiar examples: We might invest in the stock market, vote for a
political candidate who promises to solve domestic problems, play the horses, take medi-
cine to reduce the discomfort of a cold, throw dice in a gambling casino, try to anticipate
the questions on a midterm, or accept a blind date on the word of a friend.
Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. Thus, we might make a sound investment
in the stock market, but be sorry about our voting decision; win money at the craps table,
but discover we have taken the wrong medicine for our illness; do well on a midterm, but
have a miserable blind date; and so on. It is unfortunately true that not all of our everyday
predictions will be supported by experience.
The Nature of Social Research

Similar to our everyday approach to the world, social scientists attempt to explain and
predict human behavior. They also take “educated guesses” about the nature of social real-
ity, although in a far more precise and structured manner. In the process, social scientists
1
2 Chapter 1 • Why the Social Researcher Uses Statistics
examine characteristics of human behavior called variables—characteristics that differ or

vary from one individual to another (for example, age, social class, and attitude) or from
one point in time to another (for example, unemployment, crime rate, and population).
Not all human characteristics vary. It is a fact of life, for example, that the gender of
the person who gave birth to you is female. Therefore, in any group of individuals, gender
of mother is the constant “female.” A biology text would spend considerable time discuss-
ing why only females give birth and the conditions under which birth is possible, but a
social scientist would consider the mother’s gender a given, one that is not worthy of study
because it never varies. It could not be used to explain differences in the mental health of
children because all of their mothers are females. In contrast, a mother’s age, race, and
mental health are variables: In any group of individuals, they will differ from person to
person and can be the key to a greater understanding of the development of the child.
A researcher therefore might study differences in the mental health of children depending
on the age, race, and mental health of their mothers.
In addition to specifying variables, the social researcher must also determine the
unit of observation for the research. Usually, social scientists collect data on individual
persons. For example, a researcher might conduct interviews to determine if the elderly
are victimized by crime more often than younger respondents. In this case, an individual
respondent is the unit to be observed by the social scientist.
However, researchers sometimes focus their research on aggregates—that is, on the
way in which measures vary across entire collections of people. For example, a researcher
might study the relationship between the average age of the population and the crime rate
in various metropolitan areas. In this study, the units of observation are metropolitan areas
rather than individuals.
Whether focusing on individuals or aggregates, the ideas that social scientists have
concerning the nature of social reality are called hypotheses. These hypotheses are fre-
quently expressed in a statement of the relationship between two or more variables: at mini-
mum, an independent variable (or presumed cause) and a dependent variable (or presumed
effect). For example, a researcher might hypothesize that socially isolated children watch
more television than children who are well integrated into their peer groups, and he or she
might conduct a survey in which both socially isolated and well-integrated children are
asked questions regarding the time they spend watching television (social isolation would
be the independent variable; TV-viewing behavior would be the dependent variable). Or
a researcher might hypothesize that the one-parent family structure generates greater de-
linquency than the two-parent family structure and might proceed to interview samples of
delinquents and nondelinquents to determine whether one or both parents were present in
their family backgrounds (family structure would be the independent variable; delinquency
would be the dependent variable).
Thus, not unlike their counterparts in the physical sciences, social researchers often
conduct research to increase their understanding of the problems and issues in their field.
Social research takes many forms and can be used to investigate a wide range of problems.
Among the most useful research methods employed by social researchers for testing their
hypotheses are the experiment, the survey, content analysis, participant observation, second-
ary analysis, and meta-analysis. For example, a researcher may conduct an experiment to
determine if arresting a wife batterer will deter this behavior in the future, a sample survey
Chapter 1 • Why the Social Researcher Uses Statistics 3
to investigate political opinions, a content analysis of values in youth m agazines, a par-

ticipant observation of an extremist political group, or a secondary analysis of government
statistics on unemployment. Each of these research strategies is described and illustrated in
this chapter.
The Experiment
Unlike everyday observation (or, for that matter, any other research approach), the experi-
ment is distinguished by the degree of control a researcher is able to apply to the research
situation. In an experiment, researchers actually manipulate one or more of the indepen-
dent variables to which their subjects are exposed. The manipulation occurs when an ex-
perimenter assigns the independent variable to one group of people (called an experimental
group), but withholds it from another group of people (called a control group). Ideally, all
other initial differences between the experimental and control groups are eliminated by as-
signing subjects on a random basis to the experimental and control conditions.
For example, a researcher who hypothesizes that frustration increases aggression
might assign a number of subjects to the experimental and control groups at random by
flipping a coin (“heads” you’re in the experimental group; “tails” you’re in the control
group), so that in all likelihood the groups do not differ initially in any major way. The re-
searcher might then manipulate frustration (the independent variable) by asking the mem-
bers of the experimental group to solve a difficult (frustrating) puzzle, whereas the m embers
of the control group are asked to solve a much easier (nonfrustrating) version of the same
puzzle. After all subjects have been given a period of time to complete their puzzle, the
researcher might obtain a measure of aggression by asking them to administer “a mild elec-
trical shock” to another subject (actually, the other subject is a confederate of the researcher
who never really gets shocked, but the subjects presumably do not know this). If the will-
ingness of subjects to administer an electrical shock is greater in the experimental group
than in the control group, this difference would be attributed to the effect of the independent
variable, frustration. The conclusion would be that frustration does indeed tend to increase
aggressive behavior.
In 2011, Levin and Genovesi sought to investigate aspects of serial murder that con-
tribute to its widespread fascination. In a regular classroom setting, the researchers ran-
domly distributed to 232 male and female students various versions of a review of a motion
picture featuring a serial killer’s biography. The following independent variables were ex-
perimentally manipulated: killer’s body count (half of the subjects read that 3 victims were
murdered; half read that 30 victims were murdered), torture (one-third read that the kill-
er’s torture was sexual; one-third read that the killer’s torture was physical; one-third read
that the killer shot his victims without any torture), and victims’ gender (one-half read the
victims were female; one-half read the victims were male). After reading a version of the
review, fascination was measured, on a four-point rating scale, by asking all students to in-
dicate “How badly do you want to see this movie when it is released to the public?” Greater
fascination was indicated by a greater desire to view the film.
Results suggest that female subjects were significantly more fascinated than their
male counterparts, but no significant differences were found for either body count or vic-
tims’ gender. Moreover, torture—whether sexual or physical—was significantly more
fascinating than killing alone, at least for male subjects. Findings provide only partial sup-
port for the interpretation that females are motivated more than males by a protective fas-
cination with serial murder. The appeal of media-depicted torture may, in part, be a result
of treating the sadistic and cruel punishment of victims as “forbidden fruit.” Not coinci-
dentally, those relatively few cases of serial murder motivated by money or terror almost
never receive the tremendous amount of public and media attention given to sadistic serial
killers; that is, those who torture their victims.
The Survey
As we have seen, experimenters actually have a direct hand in creating the effect that
they seek to achieve. By contrast, survey research is retrospective—the effects of indepen-
dent variables on dependent variables are recorded after—and sometimes long after—they
have occurred. Survey researchers typically seek to reconstruct these influences and con-
sequences by means of verbal reports from their respondents in self-administered ques-
tionnaires, face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews, or online surveys.
Surveys lack the tight controls of experiments: Variables are not manipulated and
subjects are not assigned to groups at random. As a consequence, it is much more difficult
to establish cause and effect. Suppose, for instance, in a survey measuring fear of crime,
that a researcher finds that respondents who had been victims of crime tend to be more
fearful of walking alone in their neighborhoods than those who had not been victimized.
Because the variable victimization was not manipulated, we cannot make the logical con-
clusion that victimization causes increased fear. An alternative explanation that the condi-
tion of their neighborhoods (poverty, for example) produces both fear among residents and
crime in the streets is just as plausible.
At the same time, surveys have advantages precisely because they do not involve an
experimental manipulation. As compared with experiments, survey research can investi-
gate a much larger number of important independent variables in relation to any dependent
variable. Because they are not confined to a laboratory setting in which an independent
variable can be manipulated, surveys can also be more representative—their results can be
generalized to a broader range of people.
In 2000, for example, two Stanford University researchers interested in assessing the
social consequences of Internet use conducted surveys with a national sample of the adult
population, including both Internet users and nonusers. Norman Nie and Lutz Erbing con-
tacted 4,113 respondents in 2,689 households around the country and asked them to report
how many hours they spend on the Internet and in various social activities.
Results obtained by Nie and Erbing consistently indicated that regular Internet users
(defined as those who spend at least five hours per week on the Web) are more isolated
than nonusers. More specifically, of regular Internet users, some 25% said that they spend
less time with family and friends, 8% less time attending social events outside the home,
and 25% less time shopping in stores. In addition, more than 25% of workers who are also
regular Internet users reported that the Internet has increased the amount of time they work
at the office. About the only undeniably beneficial change associated with Internet use was
the finding that 14% of regular Internet users spend less time commuting in traffic!
At the August 2007 meeting of the American Sociological Association, Oregon

State University’s Scott Akins presented the results of a study in which he and his col-
leagues surveyed 6,713 adult residents of Washington State including 1,690 persons who
identified themselves as Hispanic. Members of their sample were questioned about their
use of illicit drugs and their ethnic identity. They were asked to indicate their marital sta-
tus, educational level, socioeconomic status, and place of residence, urban versus rural.
Holding constant these other factors, Akins and his collaborators determined that il-
licit drug use increased among recent Hispanic immigrants as they remained longer in the
United States and became more acculturated into American society. That is, to the e xtent
that Hispanic immigrants became acculturated, they replaced their traditional cultural
beliefs, language, and social patterns with those of their host society. Specifically, when
asked whether they had used illicit drugs in the previous month, less than 1% of nonaccul-
turated Hispanics indicated that they had. But 7.2% of acculturated Hispanics (not unlike
6.4% of white residents) responded in the affirmative when asked the same question about
their drug use.
The Gallup polling organization employs a survey approach. On an annual basis,
Gallup surveys a random sample of adult Americans regarding their views of the hon-
esty and ethics of numerous occupations from accountants to telemarketers. During the
dates November 28 to December 1, 2011, Gallup conducted telephone interviews with
1,012 adults, aged 18 and older, representing the residents of all 50 states and the District
of Columbia. Gallup asked: “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical
standards of people in these different fields—very high, high, average, low, or very low?”
Nurses topped the list, receiving a rating of very high or high ethical standards from
some 84% of the sample. Pharmacists were in second place; 73% of the sample gave them
high or very high ratings for honesty and ethics. At the other end of the spectrum, only 7%
gave members of Congress and car salespeople a high or very high honesty rating, indicat-
ing their very low credibility among American adults. Even telemarketers got a slightly
higher rating at 8%.
Members of Congress have long had low ratings for honesty and ethics, but never
quite this low. In 2001, 22% rated their honesty as low or very low, in contrast to the re-
sults a decade later, when members of Congress received low or very low ratings from a
large majority—some 64% of American adults.
Content Analysis
As an alternative to experiments and surveys, content analysis is a research method,
whereby a researcher seeks objectively to describe the content of previously produced
messages. Researchers who conduct a content analysis have no need directly to observe
behavior or to question a sample of respondents. Instead, they typically study the content
of books, magazines, newspapers, films, radio broadcasts, photographs, cartoons, letters,
verbal dyadic interaction, political propaganda, or music.
In 2001, for example, James Alan Fox, Jack Levin, and Jason Mazaik performed a
content analysis of celebrities depicted in People magazine cover stories. The research-
ers sought to determine how the celebrities chosen to be featured by the most popular
celebrity magazine in the United States (circulation: 3,552,287 per issue) had changed
over almost three decades. Using appropriate coding sheets, each of the more than 1,300
covers of issues of People from its inception in 1974 through 1998 was scrutinized for
various characteristics of the celebrity and the overall tone of the cover presentation.
Results obtained by Fox, Levin, and Mazaik indicated that the basis for People
celebrities appearing in a cover story has, over the decades, become dramatically more
negative. In 1974, during its first year of publication, less than 3% of all celebrities were
featured for negative reasons, such as drug or alcohol dependence, child abuse, or the
commission of a violent crime. Instead, most celebrities were on the cover because they
had accomplished a positive goal—either by overcoming a personal problem or by ac-
complishing a career objective. By 1988 and continuing as a pattern through the 1990s,
however, there was a major reversal in tone, so that almost half of all cover stories focused
not on celebrities’ positive accomplishments, but on their untoward characteristics. Along
with musicians, athletes, and political figures, People for the first time also featured mur-
derers and rapists.
In the past, various forms of communication aimed at children—children’s books,
video games, educational software, films, television shows, commercials, music videos,
comic strips, and magazines—have been shown to be dominated by males. More specifi-
cally, such media tend to under-represent female characters who are frequently portrayed
in stereotypical ways. In 2009, Black, Marola, Littman, Chrisler, and Neace published a
study examining gender images found on product packaging—specifically, on the cereal
boxes sitting on the kitchen table each morning as children eat their breakfast. The re-
searchers content analyzed a sample of 217 cereal boxes—every box in the cereal aisle
of a major supermarket in the northeastern United States. Each of the 1,568 characters
appearing on the sampled boxes was coded for gender (female or male), species (person,
animal, object), age (child/adolescent, adult), and activity level (passive, active).
Results of the content analysis were similar to those obtained in studies of gender
representations in other forms of communication. On cereal boxes, male characters out-
numbered female characters by more than two to one. Moreover, males were more likely
than females to be depicted as authority figures (that is, adults rather than children). Over-
all, female characters were under-represented and portrayed as having lower status than
their male counterparts.
Participant Observation
Another widely used research method is participant observation, whereby a researcher ac-
tively participates in the daily life of the people being studied, either openly in the role of
a social researcher or covertly in an “undercover” role, observing events, interactions, and
conversations as they happen, and questioning people over some period of time.
In 2005, sociologist Janese Free explored the influence of alternative schooling
on at-risk youth. As a participant observer, Free spent approximately 750 hours over the
course of a year at an alternative school in New England, volunteering as a classroom aide.
The alternative school was a middle school for at-risk students who had been removed
from conventional programs for reasons such as drug use, violence, truancy, or failing out
of school.
Free was a semi-covert participant observer, meaning the teachers knew she was
there to collect data for her research but the students did not. In her role as a “classroom
aide,” she participated in the students’ daily activities at school (including classroom time,
recess, gym, lunch duty), and in her role as a “researcher,” she observed and recorded the
students’ behaviors and interactions in each of these settings. In an attempt to gather the
most accurate data possible, Free recorded her observations in private (bathrooms, teach-
er’s lounge, and her car) on small pieces of paper carried in her pocket so the students
would not be aware they were being observed. These field notes were transcribed into
documents and then analyzed by coding the data and looking for common themes.
One of the participant observer’s guiding research questions was “How does at-
tending an alternative school influence its students’ development, both academically
and behaviorally?” Free identified six major influential factors (or “themes”) influenc-
ing students’ development, namely (1) alternative educational practices; (2) dedication of
teachers and staff; (3) school culture and environment; (4) student home lives; (5) student
behaviors, violence, and arrests; and (6) school disciplinary responses. Of these major
influences, Free argued that alternative education practices and the dedication of teach-
ers and staff were “enhancers” to student development, whereas the school culture and
environment; student home lives; student behaviors, violence, and arrests; and school dis-
ciplinary responses were “inhibitors” to student development and progress.
Secondary Analysis
On occasion, it is possible for a social researcher not to gather his or her own data but to
take advantage of data sets previously collected or assembled by others. Often referred to
as archival data, such information comes from government, private agencies, and even
colleges and universities. The social researcher is therefore not the primary or first one to
analyze the data; thus, whatever he or she does to examine the data is called secondary
analysis. This approach has an obvious advantage over firsthand data collection: It is rela-
tively quick and easy but still exploits data that may have been gathered in a scientifically
sophisticated manner. On the other hand, the researcher is limited to what is available, and
has no say as to how variables are defined and measured.
The April 2008 issue of the American Sociological Review contains an article in
which the effect of age on happiness is researched. The author, Yang Yang, a University
of Chicago sociologist, conducted a secondary analysis of data from the National Opinion
Research Center’s General Social Survey (GSS), which reports the results of face-to-face
interviews with a representative sample of as many as 3,000 respondents collected ev-
ery year between 1972 and 2004. In order to measure their degree of happiness, the GSS
asked respondents: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—would
you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”
Yang found that his respondents became happier with advancing age, supporting the
notion that people mature and develop in positive ways as they grow older. Moreover, hap-
piness was greater during periods of economic prosperity.
Generations also differed in terms of degree of happiness, with baby boomers—
those born between 1946 and 1964—being the least happy of any generational group.
Yang’s results indicated also that among 18-year-old respondents, white women are the
Table 1.1 Government Websites Containing Social Science Data
Website/Agency Types of Data URL
FEDSTATS Links to data and reports from www.fedstats.gov

over 70 federal agencies
Bureau of the Census Population, families, business, www.census.gov
income, housing, voting
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Crime offenders, victims, www.bjs.gov
justice system
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment, unemployment, www.bls.gov
prices, wages
Bureau of Transportation Travel, aviation, boating, www.bts.gov
Statistics (BTS) trucking, roads, highways
National Center for Health Births, illness, injury, deaths, www.cdc.gov/nchs/
Statistics (NCHS) health care, nursing homes
National Center for Education Elementary, secondary, www.nces.ed.gov
Statistics (NCES) higher education
happiest overall, followed by white men, black women, and black men. However, these
race and gender differences almost disappear as respondents mature into old age. Appar-
ently, happiness continues to increase even into the eighth decade of life.
In this text, we occasionally make use of archival data sources. In Chapter 2, for
example, we present and analyze birth rates, homicide rates, unemployment figures, and
income data drawn from various government agencies. Table 1.1 provides a list of useful
government websites from which various kinds of data related to health, housing, popula-
tion, crime, education, transportation, and the economy can be found and downloaded.
Meta-Analysis
An especially important use of the existing literature for conducting research can be found
in the approach known as meta-analysis. Rather than collect new data or depend on a
few unrepresentative studies to draw a conclusion, an investigator combines the results
obtained in a number of previous studies that have addressed the same hypothesis and sub-
jects all of them collectively to a single statistical test. In conducting a meta-analysis, the
researcher may, with the aid of a well-supported finding, be able to end a debate in the lit-
erature or confirm the validity of an important idea. The meta-analysis process essentially
consists of a literature search in which the conclusions reached by previous investigators
are ignored. Instead, the researcher re-examines the data collected previously and then
calculates an estimate of what is called the effect size—a measure of the extent to which a
relationship exists in the population.
Social interdependence, where students work together cooperatively to accomplish
their learning objectives, is one of the most fertile areas of research in education. When stu-
dents work interdependently, they are able to succeed academically only if other students
in their group also succeed. In contrast to competitive or individualistic approaches, so-

cial interdependence has become a widely used instructional procedure from preschool
through graduate school levels. It is therefore important to determine the effectiveness of
social interdependence with respect to student achievement.
In 2000, Johnson, Johnson, and Stanne examined the education literature since 1970
and located 158 studies in which the comparative effect of a particular kind of social in-
terdependence (that is, students working cooperatively) versus control methods (that is,
students working alone in competition with classmates) was tested for its impact on aca-
demic achievement. Combining all of the data collected in these 158 studies, eight differ-
ent forms of cooperative learning were determined by the researchers to have produced
significantly higher student achievement than working alone. Based on the results of this
meta-analysis, teachers should feel comfortable using a cooperative learning method in
their classrooms. There is substantial evidence that social interdependence is effective.
Why Test Hypotheses?

Social science is often referred to, quite unfairly, as the study of the obvious. However,
it is desirable, if not necessary, to test hypotheses about the nature of social reality, even
those that seem logical and self-evident. Our everyday commonsense observations are
generally based on narrow, often biased preconceptions and personal experiences. These
can lead us to accept without criticism invalid assumptions about the characteristics of
social phenomena and behavior.
To demonstrate how we can be so easily misled by our preconceptions and stereo-
types, consider what we “know” about mass murderers—those individuals who simulta-
neously kill at least four victims. According to popular thinking (and media portrayals),
mass murderers are typically insane individuals who go berserk or run amok, expressing
their anger in a spontaneous and impulsive outpouring of aggression. Moreover, they are
usually regarded as total strangers to their victims, who are unlucky enough to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time—at a shopping mall, on a commuter train, or in a fast-food
restaurant.
The foregoing conception of mass murderers may seem clear-cut and obvious. Yet,
compiling detailed information from FBI reports about 697 mass killers over the period
from 1976 to 2009, Fox and Levin found instead that mass murderers are rarely insane and
spontaneous—they know exactly what they are doing and are not driven to kill by voices
of demons. Random shootings in a public place are the exceptions; most mass murders
occur within families or among acquaintances. Typically, mass murderers target spouses
and all of their children, or bosses and their co-workers. Far from being impulsive, most
mass killers are methodical and selective. They usually plan their attacks and are quite
selective as to the victims they choose to kill. In an office massacre, for example, a mass
killer might choose to murder only those co-workers and supervisors whom the murderer
blames for losing an important promotion or getting fired.
Until recently, even criminologists all but ignored mass killings, perhaps believing
that mass murder was merely a special case of homicide (albeit, by definition, yielding a
larger body count), explainable by the same theories applied to single-victim incidents and
therefore not deserving of special treatment. From this point of view, mass murder occurs
in the same places, under the same circumstances, and for the same reasons as single-
victim murder.
Comparing FBI reports of single-victim homicides with mass murders reveals quite
a different pattern. The location of mass murder differs sharply from that of homicides
in which a single victim is slain. First, mass murders do not tend to cluster in large cities
as do single-victim crimes; rather, mass killings are more likely to occur in small-town
or rural settings. Moreover, while the South (and the deep South in particular) is known
for its high rates of murder, this does not hold for mass murder. In comparison to single-
victim murder, which is highly concentrated in urban inner-city neighborhoods and in the
deep South where arguments are often settled through gunfire, mass murder more or less
reflects the general population distribution.
Not surprisingly, the firearm is the weapon of choice in mass-murder incidents,
even more than in single-victim crimes. Clearly, a handgun or rifle is the most effective
means of mass destruction. By contrast, it is difficult to kill large numbers of people si-
multaneously with physical force or even a knife or blunt object. Furthermore, although an
explosive device can potentially cause the death of large numbers of people (as in the cata-
strophic 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building), its unpredictability would
be unacceptable for most mass killers who target their victims selectively. In addition, far
fewer Americans are proficient in the use of explosives, as compared with guns.
The findings regarding victim–offender relationships are perhaps as counterintuitive
as the weapon-use results may be obvious. Contrary to popular belief, mass murderers
infrequently attack strangers who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In fact, almost 40% of these crimes are committed against family members, and almost
as many involve other victims acquainted with the perpetrator (for example, co-workers).
It is well known that murder often involves family members, but this is especially pro-
nounced among massacres.
The differences in circumstance underlying these crimes are quite dramatic. Al-
though about half of all single-victim homicides occur during an argument between the
victim and the offender, it is relatively rare for a heated dispute to escalate into mass
murder.
Some of the most notable differences between homicide types emerge in the of-
fender data. Compared to those offenders who kill but one, mass murderers are especially
likely to be male, are far more likely to be white, and are somewhat older (middle-aged).
Typically, the single-victim offender is a young male and slightly more often black than
white.
Victim characteristics are, of course, largely a function of the offender characteris-
tics, indicating that mass killers generally do not select their victims on a random basis.
For example, the victims of mass murder are usually white simply because the perpe-
trators to whom they are related or with whom they associate are white. Similarly, the
youthfulness and greater representation of females among the victims of mass murder,
as compared to single-victim homicide, stem from the fact that a typical mass killing in-
volves the breadwinner of the household who annihilates the entire family—his wife and
his children.
The Stages of Social Research

Systematically testing our ideas about the nature of social reality often demands carefully
planned and executed research in which the following occur:
1. The problem to be studied is reduced to a testable hypothesis (for example, “One-

parent families generate more delinquency than two-parent families”).
2. An appropriate set of instruments is developed (for example, a questionnaire or an
interview schedule).
3. The data are collected (that is, the researcher might go into the field and conduct a
poll or a survey).
4. The data are analyzed for their bearing on the initial hypotheses.
5. Results of the analysis are interpreted and communicated to an audience (for ex-
ample, by means of a lecture, journal article, or press release).
As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the material presented in this book is most
closely tied to the data-analysis stage of research (number 4 above), in which the data
collected or gathered by the researcher are analyzed for their bearing on the initial hypoth-
eses. It is in this stage of research that the raw data are tabulated, calculated, counted, sum-
marized, rearranged, compared, or, in a word, organized, so that the accuracy or validity of
the hypotheses can be tested.
Using Series of Numbers to Do Social Research

Anyone who has conducted social research knows that problems in data analysis must be
confronted in the planning stages of a research project, because they have a bearing on the
nature of decisions at all other stages. Such problems often affect aspects of the research
design and even the types of instruments employed in collecting the data. For this reason,
we constantly seek techniques or methods for enhancing the quality of data analysis.
Most researchers would agree on the importance of measurement in analyzing data.
When some characteristic is measured, researchers are able to assign to it a series of num-
bers according to a set of rules. Social researchers have developed measures of a wide
range of phenomena, including occupational prestige, political attitudes, authoritarianism,
alienation, anomie, delinquency, social class, prejudice, dogmatism, conformity, achieve-
ment, ethnocentrism, neighborliness, religiosity, marital adjustment, occupational mobil-
ity, urbanization, sociometric status, and fertility.
Numbers have at least three important functions for social researchers, depending on
the particular level of measurement that they employ. Specifically, series of numbers can
be used to
1. classify or categorize at the nominal level of measurement,

2. rank or order at the ordinal level of measurement, and
3. assign a score at the interval/ratio level of measurement.
Table 1.2 Attitudes of 10 College

Students toward Latinos: Nominal
Data
Attitude toward
Latinos Frequency
1 = prejudiced 5
2 = tolerant 5
Total 10
The Nominal Level

The nominal level of measurement involves naming or labeling—that is, placing cases
into categories and counting their frequency of occurrence. To illustrate, we might use a
nominal-level measure to indicate whether each respondent is prejudiced or tolerant to-
ward Latinos. As shown in Table 1.2, we might question the 10 students in a given class
and determine that 5 can be regarded as (1) prejudiced and 5 can be considered (2) tolerant.
Other nominal-level measures in social research are sex (male versus female), wel-
fare status (recipient versus nonrecipient), political party (Republican, Democrat, and
Libertarian), social character (inner-directed, other-directed, and tradition-directed), mode
of adaptation (conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion), and time orien-
tation (present, past, and future), to mention only a few.
When dealing with nominal data, we must keep in mind that every case must be
placed in one, and only one, category. This requirement indicates that the categories must be
nonoverlapping, or mutually exclusive. Thus, a respondent’s race classified as white cannot
also be classified as black; any respondent labeled male cannot also be labeled female. The
requirement also indicates that the categories must be exhaustive—there must be a place for
every case that arises. For illustrative purposes, imagine a study in which all respondents are
interviewed and categorized by race as either black or white. Where would we categorize a
Chinese respondent if he or she were to appear? In this case, it might be necessary to expand
the original category system to include Asians or, assuming that most respondents will be
white or black, to include an “other” category in which such exceptions can be placed.
The reader should note that nominal data are not graded, ranked, or scaled for quali-
ties, such as better or worse, higher or lower, more or less. Clearly, then, a nominal mea-
sure of sex does not signify whether males are superior or inferior to females. Nominal
data are merely labeled, sometimes by name (male versus female or prejudiced versus
tolerant), other times by number (1 versus 2), but always for the purpose of grouping
the cases into separate categories to indicate sameness or differentness with respect to a
given quality or characteristic. Thus, even when a number is used to label a category (for
example, 1 = white, 2 = black, 3 = other), a quantity is not implied.
The Ordinal Level

When the researcher goes beyond the nominal level of measurement and seeks to order
his or her cases in terms of the degree to which they have any given characteristic, he or
she is working at the ordinal level of measurement. The nature of the relationship among
Table 1.3 Attitudes of 10 College

Students toward Latinos: Ordinal
Data
Student Rank
Nadine 1 = most prejudiced

Max 2 = second
Jacob 3 = third
Tatiana 4 = fourth
Ahn 5 = fifth
Christina 6 = sixth
Jaden 7 = seventh
Tanisha 8 = eighth
Ben 9 = ninth
Hung 10 = least prejudiced
ordinal categories depends on that characteristic the researcher seeks to measure. To take
a familiar example, one might classify individuals with respect to socioeconomic status as
lower class, middle class, or upper class. Or, rather than categorize the students in a given
classroom as either prejudiced or tolerant, the researcher might rank them according to
their degree of prejudice against Latinos, as indicated in Table 1.3.
The ordinal level of measurement yields information about the ordering of catego-
ries, but does not indicate the magnitude of differences between numbers. For instance,
the social researcher who employs an ordinal-level measure to study prejudice toward
Latinos does not know how much more prejudiced one respondent is than another. In the
example given in Table 1.3, it is not possible to determine how much more prejudiced
Nadine is than Max or how much less prejudiced Hung is than Ben or Tanisha. This is
because the intervals between the points or ranks on an ordinal scale are not known or
meaningful. Therefore, it is not possible to assign scores to cases located at points along
the scale.
The Interval/Ratio Level

By contrast to the ordinal level, the interval and ratio levels of measurement not only
indicate the ordering of categories but also the exact distance between them. Interval and
ratio measures employ constant units of measurement (for example, dollars or cents, de-
grees Fahrenheit or Celsius, yards or feet, minutes or seconds), which yield equal intervals
between points on the scale. Table 1.4, for example, shows attitudes of college students to-
ward Latinos measured at the interval level. This allows us to see the magnitude or degree
of differences in prejudice as opposed to just ranks.
Some variables in their natural form are interval/ratio level—for example, how many
pounds you weigh, how many siblings you have, or how long it takes a student to complete
an exam. In the social sciences, naturally formed interval/ratio measures might include the
length of a prison sentence, the number of children in a family, or the amount of time—in
minutes and hours—an individual spends on the job.
Table 1.4 Attitudes of

10 College Students toward
Latinos: Interval Data
Student Scorea
Nadine 98
Max 96
Jacob 95
Tatiana 94
Ahn 22
Christina 21
Jaden 20
Tanisha 15
Ben 11
Hung 6
a
Higher scores indicate greater
prejudice against Latinos.
Other variables are interval/ratio because of how we scale them. Typically, an interval/
ratio measure that we construct generates a set of scores that can be compared with one an-
other. As currently used by social scientists, for example, a well-known measure of job sat-
isfaction, employed by Tom W. Smith who directs the General Social Survey at the National
Opinion Research Center, is treated as an interval variable. In this process, respondents are
asked to indicate how satisfied they are with the work they do on a four-point rating scale
consisting of 1 for someone who is “very dissatisfied,” 2 for someone who is “a little dissat-
isfied,” 3 for someone who is “moderately satisfied,” and 4 for someone who is “very satis-
fied.” The occupations are then placed in a hierarchy from lowest to highest, depending on
the overall evaluations—the mean (average) satisfaction score—they receive from a group of
respondents who hold the jobs they are asked to judge. In one recent study, for example, the
job title clergy received a mean rating of 3.79 (almost at the “very satisfied” level), whereas
waiters received a mean of 2.85 (close to the “moderately satisfied” level); physical thera-
pists received a mean score of 3.72, whereas roofers received a mean of 2.84.
As depicted in Table 1.5, we are able to order a group of eight occupations in
terms of their degree of satisfaction and, in addition, determine the exact distances sepa-
rating one from another. This requires making the assumption that our measure of job
satisfaction uses a constant unit of measurement (one satisfaction point). Thus, we can
say that the job of clergy is the most satisfying on the list because it received the high-
est score on the measure. We can also say that authors are only slightly more satisfied
than psychologists, but much more satisfied than bartenders and roofers, both of which
received extremely low scores. Depending on the purpose for which a study is designed,
such information might be important to determine, but is not available at the ordinal
level of measurement.
The ratio level is the same as the interval level, but in addition presumes the exis-
tence of an absolute or true zero point. In contrast, an interval-level variable may have an
artificial zero value or even none at all.
Table 1.5 Satisfaction Scores

of Eight Jobs: Interval Data
Satisfaction
Job Score
Clergy 3.79
Teachers 3.61
Authors 3.61
Psychologists 3.59
Butchers 2.97
Cashiers 2.94
Bartenders 2.88
Roofers 2.84
For example, age meets the condition for the ratio level, because a zero represents
birth, or the complete absence of age. In contrast, the Fahrenheit scale of temperature pos-
sesses an artificial zero point, because “zero degrees” does not represent the total absence
of heat, even though it does not feel particularly warm. Similarly, the IQ scale has no zero
point at all—that is, there is no such thing as a zero IQ—and therefore qualifies only as an
interval scale. Thus, we cannot say that a person with an IQ of 150 is 50% more intelligent
than someone with an average 100 IQ.
Similarly, a score of zero on a scale of occupational satisfaction, if it existed, would
indicate a total absence of any satisfaction at all (“complete dissatisfaction”), and there-
fore potentially represents a ratio scale. As constructed by the author, however, the scale of
occupational prestige illustrated previously has not been given a score of zero (a score of
“1” indicates “very” but not complete dissatisfaction) and is therefore at the interval, not
the ratio, level.
When it comes right down to it, it makes little practical difference whether a variable
is at the interval or the ratio level. There are many important statistical techniques that as-
sume a standard distance between scale points (that is, an interval scale), but there are very
few that require valid ratios between scale points (that is, a ratio scale). Thus, throughout
the remainder of the book, we shall indicate whether a technique requires the nominal
level, the ordinal level, or the interval level.
Different Ways to Measure the Same Variable

As noted earlier, the level of measurement of certain naturally occurring variables like
gender or hair color is clear-cut, while others are constructed by how the social researcher
defines them. In fact, the same variable can be measured at different levels of precision
depending on the research objectives.
Figure 1.1, for example, illustrates several ways in which the variable “pain” might
be measured by a researcher interested in health issues. At the lowest level—nominal—re-
spondents could be classified as being in pain or pain-free, or they could be asked to indi-
cate what type of pain (sharp, dull or throbbing) they are experiencing. Of course, the extent
of pain could be measured in an ordinal scale ranging from none to severe or respondents
Nominal Level
Question: Are you currently in pain? Yes or No
Question: How would you characterize the type of pain? Sharp, Dull, Throbbing
Ordinal Level
Question: How bad is the pain right now? None, Mild, Moderate, Severe
Question: Compared with yesterday, is the pain less severe, about the same, or more severe?
Interval/Ratio Level
0–10 Numerical Scale
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
No Worst
pain pain
imaginable
Visual Analog Scale

No Worst
pain Ask patient to indicate on the line where the pain is in relation to the two extremes. pain
Quantification is only approximate; for example, a midpoint mark would indicate
that the pain is approximately half of the worst possible pain.
Pain Faces Scale
0 2 4 6 8 10
Very happy, Hurts just a Hurts a little Hurts even Hurts a whole Hurts as much
no hurt little bit more more lot as you can
imagine
Figure 1.1 Different ways to measure pain
could indicate whether their pain was better, worse, or the same. More precisely, the degree
of pain could be reported numerically from 0 to 10, reflecting an interval/ratio level scale.
Alternative ways of measuring pain at the interval/ratio level include having respondents in-
dicate their degree of pain by marking on a continuum, from no pain to worst pain. Finally,
the Pain Faces Scale, with its associated scores, might be used for children with limited
verbal skills or foreign-speaking adults.
Treating Some Ordinal Variables as Interval

At this point, the distinction between the nominal and ordinal levels should be quite clear.
It would be difficult to confuse the level of measurement attained by the variable “color
of hair” (blond, redhead, brunette, and black), which is nominal, with that of the variable
“condition of hair” (dry, normal, oily), which is ordinal.
The distinction between ordinal and interval, however, is not always clear-cut. Often,
variables that in the strictest sense are ordinal may be treated as if they were interval when
the ordered categories are fairly evenly spaced. Actually, an earlier example—the measure
of job satisfaction—can be used to make this point. To treat this measure as interval rather
than ordinal, it is necessary to assume that the distance between “very dissatisfied” and
“a little dissatisfied” is roughly the same as the distance between “a little dissatisfied” and
“moderately satisfied” and between “moderately satisfied” and “very satisfied.” If we are
unable to make the assumption of equal intervals between the points on the scale, then the
satisfaction measure should be treated as an ordinal scale.
To take another example, the following two variables (rank of professor and attitude
toward professor) are both ordinal:
Scale Value Rank of Professor Attitude toward Professor
1 Distinguished professor Very favorable

2 Full professor Favorable
3 Associate professor Somewhat favorable
4 Assistant professor Neutral
5 Instructor Somewhat unfavorable
6 Lecturer Unfavorable
7 Teaching assistant Very unfavorable
The rank-of-professor variable could hardly be mistaken for interval. The difference
between instructor (5) and lecturer (6) is minimal in terms of prestige, salary, or qualifica-
tions, whereas the difference between instructor (5) and assistant professor (4) is substan-
tial, with the latter generally requiring a doctorate and receiving a much higher salary. By
contrast, the attitude-toward-professor variable has scale values that are roughly evenly
spaced. The difference between somewhat unfavorable (5) and unfavorable (6) appears to
be virtually the same as the difference between somewhat unfavorable (5) and neutral (4).
This is also true of most attitude scales ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
Rather than split hairs, many researchers make a practical decision. Whenever pos-
sible, they choose to treat ordinal variables as interval, but only when it is reasonable
to assume that the scale has roughly equal intervals. Thus, they would treat the attitude-
toward-professor variable as if it were interval, but they would never treat the rank-of-
professor variable as anything other than ordinal. As you will see later in the text, treating
ordinal variables that have nearly evenly spaced values as if they were interval allows
researchers to use more powerful statistical procedures.
Further Measurement Issues

Whether a variable is measured at the nominal, ordinal, or interval level is sometimes a
natural feature of the characteristic itself, and not at all influenced by the decisions that the
social researcher makes in defining and collecting data. Hair color (black, brown, blonde,
gray, and so on), race (black, white, Asian, and so on), and region of residence (North-
east, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Mountain, and West) are, for example, unquestion-
ably nominal-level variables. A researcher, however, can still expand the meaning of basic
characteristics like these in an attempt to increase the precision and power of his or her
data. Hair color, for example, can be redefined in terms of shades (for example, from dark
brown to platinum blonde) to elevate the level of measurement to ordinal status. Similarly,
for the purpose of measuring geographic proximity to Southern culture, an ordinal-level
“Southerness scale” might be developed to distinguish Mississippi and Alabama at one
extreme, Kentucky and Tennessee next, followed by Maryland and Delaware, and then
Connecticut and Vermont at the other extreme. Although it may be somewhat stretching
the point, a researcher could also develop an interval-level Southerness scale, using the
number of miles a state’s center lies above or below the Mason–Dixon line.
More commonly, there are situations in which variables must be downgraded in their
level of measurement, even though this might reduce their precision. To increase the response
rate, for example, a telephone interviewer might redefine age, an interval-level variable, into
ordinal categories such as toddler, child, teenager, young adult, middle-aged, and senior.
Another important measurement distinction that social researchers confront is be-
tween discrete and continuous variables. Discrete data take on only certain specific values.
For example, family size can be expressed only in whole numbers from 1 on up (there is
no such thing as 3.47 people in a family; it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, or more members). Family size
therefore represents a discrete interval-level measure. Moreover, nominal variables (such
as New England states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, and
New Hampshire; gender: female and male; religion: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim,
Hindu, etc.), by virtue of their categorical nature, are always discrete.
Continuous variables, on the other hand, present an infinite range of possible values,
although the manner in which we measure them may appear to be discrete. Body weight,
for example, can take on any number of values, including 143.4154 pounds. Some bathroom
scales may measure this weight to the nearest whole pound (143 pounds), and others may
measure weight to the nearest half pound (143.5), and some even to the nearest tenth of a
pound (143.4). Underlying whatever measuring device we use, however, is a natural con-
tinuum. Similarly, age is a continuous variable and theoretically could be measured in nano-
seconds from birth on. Yet it is customary to use whole numbers (years for adults, weeks for
infants) in recording this variable. As shown earlier, it is also a common practice arbitrarily
to divide the continuum of age into categories such as toddler, child, teenager, young adult,
middle-aged, and senior.
The Functions of Statistics

When researchers use numbers—when they quantify their data at the nominal, ordinal, or
interval level of measurement—they are likely to employ statistics as a tool of description
or decision making. Let us now take a closer look at these important functions of statistics.
Description
To arrive at conclusions or obtain results, a social researcher often studies hundreds, thousands,
or even larger numbers of persons or groups. As an extreme case, the U.S. Bureau of the Cen-
sus conducts a complete enumeration of the U.S. population, in which millions of individuals
are contacted. Despite the aid of numerous sophisticated procedures, it is always a formidable
task to describe and summarize the mass of data generated from large-scale research projects.
Table 1.6 Examination Grades

of 80 Students
72 49 81 52 31
38 81 58 68 73
43 56 45 54 40
81 60 52 52 38
79 83 63 58 59
71 89 73 77 60
65 60 69 88 75
59 52 75 70 93
90 62 91 61 53
83 32 49 39 57
39 28 67 74 61
42 39 76 68 65
58 49 72 29 70
56 48 60 36 79
72 65 40 49 37
63 72 58 62 46
To take a familiar example, the examination grades of 80 students have been listed in
Table 1.6. Do you see any patterns in these grades? Can you describe these grades in a few
words? In a few sentences? Can you tell if they are particularly high or low on the whole?
Your answer to these questions should be “no.” However, using even the most ba-
sic principles of descriptive statistics, it is possible to characterize the distribution of the
examination grades in Table 1.6 with a good deal of clarity and precision, so that overall
tendencies or group characteristics can be quickly discovered and easily communicated to
almost anyone. First, the grades can be rearranged in consecutive order (from highest to
lowest) and grouped into a much smaller number of categories. As shown in Table 1.7, this
grouped frequency distribution (to be discussed in detail in Chapter 2) presents the grades
within broader categories along with the number or frequency ( f ) of students whose grades
Table 1.7 Examination Grades

of 80 Students: A Grouped
Frequency Distribution
Grades f
90–99 3
80–89 7
70–79 16
60–69 17
50–59 15
40–49 11
30–39 9
20–29 2
N = 80
fell into these categories. It can be readily seen, for example, that 17 students received
grades between 60 and 69; only 2 students received grades between 20 and 29.
Another useful procedure (explained in Chapter 2) rearranges the grades graphi-
cally. As shown in Figure 1.2, the categories of grades are placed (from 20–29 to 90–99)
along one line of a graph (that is, the horizontal baseline) and their numbers or frequen-
cies along another line (that is, the vertical axis). This arrangement results in a rather eas-
ily visualized graphic representation in which we can see that most grades fall between 50
and 80, whereas relatively few grades are much higher or lower.
As further explained in Chapter 3, a particularly convenient and useful statisti-
cal method—one with which you are already more or less familiar—is to ask: What is
the grade of the average person in this group of 80 students? The arithmetic average (or
mean), which can be obtained by adding the entire list of grades and dividing this sum by
the number of students, gives us a clearer picture of the overall group tendency or class
performance. The arithmetic average in this example happens to be 60.5, a rather low
grade compared against the class averages with which most students may be familiar. Ap-
parently, this group of 80 students did relatively poorly as a whole on this particular exam.
Consider this analogy. Suppose a friend calls and wants to set you up on a blind date
with someone who is “a perfect match.” You would probably have a few questions before
deciding whether or not to agree to meet this “perfect” stranger. Knowing things such as
the person’s age might be critical to your decision, whereas other attributes such as hair
length and eye color would probably be less informative.
In certain respects, confronting a large array of data, such as that in Table 1.6, is like
confronting the prospect of a blind date. Statisticians attempt to describe a set of blind data
not only using frequency distributions (as in Table 1.7), but also with a variety of summary
measures. Statistics like the minimum and maximum values in the data set are mildly
20
15
Frequency
10
0
20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 70–79 80–89 90–99
Grade categories
Figure 1.2 Graph of examination grades of 80 students

informative, while quantities like the arithmetic mean or middlemost score are extremely
telling about the distribution of data.
Returning to the possible fix-up, your friend might be able to e-mail you a photo-
graph of the potential date. This would be helpful, of course, but only to the extent that the
photo is of high quality—taken with good lighting and free of distortion. Similarly, a chart
like Figure 1.2 depicting a distribution helps researchers to make sense of the data, but
only if the graphic is accurately drawn and distortion-free.
Thus, with the help of statistical devices, such as grouped frequency distributions,
graphs, and the arithmetic average, it is possible to detect and describe patterns or tenden-
cies in distributions of scores (for example, the grades in Table 1.6) that might otherwise
have gone unnoticed by the casual observer. In the present context, then, statistics may be
defined as a set of techniques for the reduction of quantitative data (that is, a series of num-
bers) to a small number of more convenient and easily communicated descriptive terms.
Decision Making
For purposes of testing hypotheses, it is frequently necessary to go beyond mere descrip-
tion. It is often also necessary to make inferences—that is, to make decisions based on
data collected on only a small portion or sample of the larger group we have in mind to
study. Factors such as cost, time, and need for adequate supervision of interviewers many
times preclude taking a complete enumeration or poll of the entire group (social research-
ers call this larger group from which the sample was drawn a population or universe).
Returning once more to the fix-up analogy, there is one other aspect in which the
blind date and blind data comparison holds. One, two, or just a few dates will rarely be
enough to determine if this is someone with whom you’d want to spend the rest of your
life. Only with sufficient exposure to this person can you gain a true sense of his or her
true nature, beyond the superficial aspects of personal appearance. In statistics, we use
a sample of data to understand the characteristics of the population from which it was
drawn. A small sample is hardly reliable, whereas a large sample allows us to generalize to
the population. Many points of data, like many dates with a potential life-partner, allow us
to make decisions with a high degree of confidence.
As we shall see in Chapter 6, every time social researchers test hypotheses on a
sample, they must decide whether it is indeed accurate to generalize the findings to the en-
tire population from which they were drawn. Error inevitably results from sampling, even
sampling that has been properly conceived and executed. This is the problem of general-
izing or drawing inferences from the sample to the population.1
1
The concept of sampling error is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6. However, to understand the inevita-
bility of error when sampling from a larger group, you may now wish to conduct the following demonstration.
Refer to Table 1.6, which contains the grades for a population of 80 students. At random (for example, by closing
your eyes and pointing), select a sample of five grades from the entire list. Find the average grade by adding the
five scores and dividing by 5, the total number of grades. It has already been pointed out that the average grade
for the entire class of 80 students was 60.5. To what extent does your sample average differ from the class aver-
age, 60.5? Try this demonstration on several more samples of a few grades randomly selected from the larger
group. With great consistency, you should find that your sample mean will almost always differ at least slightly
from that obtained from the entire class of 80 students. That is what we mean by sampling error.
Statistics can be useful for purposes of generalizing findings, with a high degree of con-
fidence, from small samples to larger populations. To understand better this decision-making
purpose of statistics and the concept of generalizing from samples to populations, let us ex-
amine the results of a hypothetical study that was conducted to test the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis: Male college students are more likely than female college students to
have tried marijuana.
The researchers in this study decided to test their hypothesis at an urban university
in which some 20,000 students (10,000 males and 10,000 females) were enrolled. Due
to cost and time factors, they were not able to interview every student on campus, but
did obtain from the registrar’s office a complete listing of university students. From this
list, every one-hundredth student (one-half of them male, one-half of them female) was
selected for the sample and subsequently interviewed by members of the research staff.
The interviewers asked each of the 200 members of the sample whether he or she had ever
tried marijuana and then recorded the student’s gender as either male or female. After all
interviews had been completed and returned to the staff office, the responses on the mari-
juana question were tabulated by gender, as presented in Table 1.8.
Notice that results obtained from this sample of 200 students, as presented in Table 1.8,
are in the hypothesized direction: 35 out of 100 males reported having tried marijuana,
whereas only 15 out of 100 females reported having tried marijuana. Clearly, in this small
sample, males were more likely than females to have tried marijuana. For our purposes,
however, the more important question is whether these gender differences in marijuana use
are large enough to generalize them confidently to the much larger university population of
20,000 students. Do these results represent true population differences between males and
females? Or have we obtained chance differences between males and females due strictly to
sampling error—the error that occurs every time we take a small group from a larger group?
To illuminate the problem of generalizing results from samples to larger populations,
imagine that the researchers had, instead, obtained the results shown in Table 1.9. Notice that
these results are still in the predicted direction: 30 males as opposed to only 20 females have
tried marijuana. But, are we still willing to generalize these results to the larger university
population? Is it not likely that a difference of this magnitude (10 more males than females)
would have happened simply by chance? Or can we confidently say that such relatively small
differences reflect a real difference between males and females at that particular university?
Table 1.8 Marijuana Use by Gender

of Respondent: Case I
Gender of
Respondent
Marijuana Use Male Female
Number who have tried it 35 15

Number who have not tried it 65 85
Total 100 100
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)
The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.
NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.
MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]
MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY
With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER
Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT
SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB
CUTTING THE EDGE

FINISHING THE BOTTOM
LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING
FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE
TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL
NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK
DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG
REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

BEATING THE BARK
WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT
MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

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Elementary Statidtics in Social

Research 12th Edition, (Ebook PDF)

The Null Hypothesis: No Difference between Means 223

Comparing Dependent Samples 244

Requirements for Testing the Difference between Means 260

8 Analysis of Variance 276

The Logic of Analysis of Variance 278

The F Ratio 287

A Multiple Comparison of Means 294

9 Nonparametric Tests of Significance 319

One-Way Chi-Square Test 320

Two-Way Chi-Square Test 325

The Median Test 341

Mann-Whitney U Test 344

Kruskal-Wallis Test 347

Part IV • From Decision Making to Association 365

Strength of Correlation 367

The Importance of Scatter Plots 379

11 Regression Analysis 400

The Regression Model 401

12 Nonparametric Measures of Correlation 444

Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation Coefficient 444

Part V • Applying Statistics 477

13 Choosing Statistical Procedures for Research Problems 479

Research Situations 483

New to this edition:

The Nature of Social Research Summary

The Nature of Social Research

examine characteristics of human behavior called variables—characteristics that differ or

to investigate political opinions, a content analysis of values in youth m­ agazines, a par-

At the August 2007 meeting of the American Sociological Association, Oregon

Table 1.1 Government Websites Containing Social Science Data

Website/Agency Types of Data URL

FEDSTATS Links to data and reports from www.fedstats.gov

in their group also succeed. In contrast to competitive or individualistic approaches, so-

Why Test Hypotheses?

The Stages of Social Research

1. The problem to be studied is reduced to a testable hypothesis (for example, “One-

Using Series of Numbers to Do Social Research

1. classify or categorize at the nominal level of measurement,

Table 1.2 Attitudes of 10 College

The Nominal Level

The Ordinal Level

Table 1.3 Attitudes of 10 College

Nadine 1 = most prejudiced

The Interval/Ratio Level

Table 1.4 Attitudes of

Table 1.5 Satisfaction Scores

Different Ways to Measure the Same Variable

Visual Analog Scale

Pain Faces Scale

Figure 1.1 Different ways to measure pain

Treating Some Ordinal Variables as Interval

Scale Value Rank of Professor Attitude toward Professor

1 Distinguished professor Very favorable

Further Measurement Issues

The Functions of Statistics

Table 1.6 Examination Grades

Table 1.7 Examination Grades

Figure 1.2 Graph of examination grades of 80 students

Table 1.8 Marijuana Use by Gender

Number who have tried it 35 15

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

to investigate political opinions, a content analysis of values in youth m agazines, a par-