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Activity: Current Population Survey

  • The Current Population Survey (CPS) is “one of the oldest, largest, and most well-recognized surveys in the United States.  It is immensely important, providing information on many of the things that define us as individuals and as a society – our work, our earnings, and our education.”  (Optional: video overview)
  • CPS webpage https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps.html. Follow the links for Technical Documentation and then Methodology.
  • Current Population Survey Datasets. Follow the link for Annual Social and Economic Supplements. Download a csv file.
  • Data Dictionary. Find the description of the A_HRSPAY variable. (How did you find it? What did you search on?)  What does this variable measure?  Who is measured for this variable?

Chandler, 2025

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Activity: Current Population Survey

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What is the average hourly pay?

  • Look at mean or median?

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  • For those who earned an hourly wage

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  • And non-zero hourly wage?

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Use the data dictionary!

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Habits of mind

  • Keep checking size of data file
  • Know variable definitions
  • Subsetting
  • Presenting results
    • Labeling
    • Amount of information

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Another example

  • CDC’s Vital Statistics Online Data Portal allows you to download birth records for all births in the U.S. in a particular year.
  • January 2022 birth weights (n = 305,536 births)
  • Make a graph!
    • “Normal distribution”

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Advantages

  • You can do this from beginning of course!
  • Emphasizes entire process of conducting statistical investigations to answer real research questions
    • From data collection to inference in one day
    • As opposed to disconnected blocks of data analysis, then data collection, then probability, then statistical inference
  • Leads to deeper understanding of concepts such as statistical significance, p-value, confidence
  • Very powerful, easily generalized tool
    • Flexibility in choice of test statistic (e.g. medians, odds ratio)
    • Generalize to more than two groups

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Chandler, 2025