Student worksheet

National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY)

Self-reported synthetic microdata file for 16-17 year olds

Name:

Section of Questionnaire:

Group Members:

Objectives

During this activity, you will examine NLSCY synthetic microdata critically. You will:

• become familiar with different types of analysis
• represent the data visually
• make conclusions based on your analysis
• share your findings with the class

Instructions

1. Your group will be assigned a set of questions to examine that relate to one of the following sections of the NLSCY questionnaire:
   • Section A: Friends and Family
   • Section B: About Me
   • Section C: Feelings and Behaviours
   • Section D: Smoking, Drinking, and Drugs
   • Section E: Health
   • Section F: My Relationships
   • Section G: My Parent(s)
2. With your group, read and discuss the list of analysis questions for your section.
3. From the list, select two questions that interest you. Make sure every question has at least one person in your group assigned to it. If you wish, you may come up with your own question to investigate.
4. Complete Part 1 of the worksheet on your own.
5. Reconvene with your group and complete Part 2 of the worksheet. Be prepared to present your findings to the class.
6. During the group presentations and whole class discussion, complete Part 3 of the worksheet.

Part 1: On your own

The two questions I have selected are:

For my selected questions, I predict the relationship/trend to be:

Download the synthetic microdata from the NLSCY survey from the Statistics Canada website and open it with your statistical software.

Please note:

1. Section headers are in capital letters. There are no data corresponding to the headers (e.g., 'PERSONAL DATA').
2. The first characters of each attribute name are the question numbers (e.g., A1, B4). If the question has multiple parts, each of the corresponding attribute names will have the same initial characters. For example, Question A14 asks 'Who besides your friends do you talk to about your problems?' and offers answers such as 'Mother' and 'Father'. Each of these sub-categories will also be denoted as A14 as they relate to that question.
3. More information about the study and about the attributes in the dataset is available as part of the Description of items in dataset.

Tips on performing statistical analyses

Summary tables
Summary tables are useful to quickly display information about one or two attributes and about how two attributes may be linked.

Performing an analysis between two numeric attributes
Plot one numeric attribute on the x-axis and the other numeric attribute on the y-axis. You can then examine different numeric measures, plot the line of best fit, and examine the r² value.

Performing an analysis between a numeric and a categorical attribute
Plot the attributes on the x-axis and y-axis. A box plot provides a good visual representation. You can also plot numeric measures such as mean or median for the numeric attribute. A summary table can help in identifying different measures.

Performing an analysis between two categorical attributes
Plot one attribute on one axis and the other attribute onto the graph itself to overlay the data onto the existing graph. Be sure to arrange categories in an order that makes sense (e.g., least to most). It may help to use a ribbon chart to accurately compare proportions.

Relationships

1. What trends or relationships did you find in your data? Include actual measures (equation of line of best fit, mean, r² value, etc.) if performing numeric analysis.
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2. Please explain these relationships (or lack of relationships).
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Part 2: With your group

In the space provided below, summarize your group's findings about the section of the NLSCY questionnaire you analyzed.

Part 3: With the whole class

In the space provided below, make notes on ways you could perform further analyses on this dataset or use these data in a project.