GSS 1

Running Head: The General Social Survey (GSS)

Samuel R. Morris

The General Social Survey (GSS)

SOWK 300

Tuskegee University

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

GSS 2

Hypothesis: My first hypothesis for this paper is a person’s race can affect their level of

happiness. The independent variable for this project is happy and the dependent variable is race.

Under the independent variable, the values that I used were very happy, pretty happy, not too

happy, and other. Under the dependent variables, the values that I used were Black, White, and

Other. For this project, my control variable was Sex.

Under my control variable, the values that I used were male, female and other.. I used

my control variable to establish my second hypothesis for this project – my multivariate

hypothesis. My second hypothesis is one’s sex and race can affect their level of happiness. The

control variable will affect the first hypothesis in a significant way because men and women

operate differently. It will be very interesting to see how these variables respond to the recorded

data.

Rationale: Everyone is this world wants to be happy. They want to be filled with some type of

joy that keeps them warm at night; however, for some that is not the case. Throughout American

history, people’s levels of happiness have varied throughout for different reasons. There have

been many studies that have tried to analyze people’s levels of happiness and I intend on doing

the same.

In this project, I will be only looking at the year 2000 so my findings cannot speak for

every American. I decided to look at this aspect of America because people’s behaviors tend to

vary, especially when they are happy or not. Moreover, it will allow me understand people on a

deeper level. As stated before, I understand that because I am only looking at one year (2000)

my findings will be slanted. Nevertheless, I am excited to see how these results will turn out.

GSS 3

Results:

Bivariate Table

Table 1

Race by Level of Happiness of R (%)

______________________________________________________________________________

R’s Level of Happiness

______________________________________________________________________________

Level of Happiness Very Happy Pretty Happy Not Too Happy Other Total

Black 93.9% 68.1% 61.5% 76.9% 75.0%

White 6.1% 27.5% 30.8% 23.1% 21.9%

Totals 100 100 100 100 100

(N) (33) (66) (12) (13) (124)

______________________________________________________________________________

Source: The General Social Survey (GSS)

GSS 4

Multivariate Table

Table 2

Race by Level of Happiness of R (%)

Controlling for R’s Sex

______________________________________________________________________________

R’s Level of Happiness

______________________________________________________________________________

Level of Happiness Very Happy Pretty Happy Not Too Happy Other Total

______________________________________________________________________________

Male Respondents

Black 100% 78.1% 83.3% 100% 85.5%

White .0% 21.9% 16.7% .0% 14.5%

Totals 100 100 100 100 100

(N) (14) (32) (6) (3) (55)

______________________________________________________________________________

Female Respondents

Black 89.5% 59.5% 42.9% 70.0% 67.1%

White 10.5% 32.4% 42.9% 30.0% 27.4%

Totals 100 100 100 100 100

(N) (19) (34) (6) (10) (69)

______________________________________________________________________________

Source: The General Social Survey (GSS)

GSS 5

Discussion: Everyone wants and deserves some type of happiness. When I originally started

this project, I expected to see certain things; however, I was mistaken and shocked. On my first

hypothesis, I predicted that a person’s race would have affect on their level of happiness. For

purposes of this analysis, we will just focus on the first three variables. “Other” is classified as

either missing or no information. The first thing that shocked me was that Black people were

happier than White people. 93.9% of the Black respondents were very happy versus 6.1% of

White respondents. Nevertheless, 61.5% of the Black respondents were not too happy versus

23.1% of White respondents. These findings shocked me because although there was a high

percentage of Blacks that were happy in 2000, there were still a high number of them that was

not.

My second hypothesis focused on the same aspect controlling for the respondent’s sex.

These findings also proved to shock me even more than the bivariate findings. The findings

proved that Black Men (100%) were happier than Black Women (89.5%); however, White

Women (10.5%) were happier than White Men (.0%). After looking at these results, it puzzled

me why there was no numerical value for White Men. I concluded that maybe they did not

respond throughout the survey.

These findings were very interesting. My hypotheses were proven correct, but I was very

shocked from the findings. I expected to see that there were more White people happier than

Black people were, but I was proven wrong. I was ecstatic to see that Blacks, in 2000, were

happy with their lives and what they were doing. The year 2000 was a year of great prosperity

and based on my findings, Blacks were really enjoying life and what it had to offer.

GSS 6

Appendix

GSS 7

GSS 8

GSS 9

GSS 10

GSS 11

Syntax File

DATASET ACTIVATE DataSet1.

STRING HAPPY2 (A8).

RECODE HAPPY (1='1') (2='2') (3='3') (ELSE='5') INTO HAPPY2.

VARIABLE LABELS HAPPY2 'LEVEL OF HAPPINESS'.

EXECUTE.

CROSSTABS

/TABLES=RACE BY HAPPY2

/FORMAT=AVALUE TABLES

/STATISTICS=CHISQ GAMMA

/CELLS=COUNT COLUMN

/COUNT ROUND CELL.

CROSSTABS

/TABLES=RACE BY HAPPY2 BY SEX

/FORMAT=AVALUE TABLES

/STATISTICS=CHISQ GAMMA

/CELLS=COUNT COLUMN

/COUNT ROUND CELL.

GSS 12

Codebook

Independent Variable: Race

Label: Respondent’s Race

1 = Black

2 = White

3 = Other

Dependent Variable: Happy2

Label: Level of Happiness

1 = Very Happy

2 = Pretty Happy

3 = Not too Happy

8 = Other

Control Variable: Sex

Label: Respondent’s Sex

1 = Male

2 = Female

3 = Other