You've Learned in Your Criminology Class That Low Self-Control Is

Essay

You've learned in your criminology class that low self-control is, according to Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), a strong predictor for criminal behavior. You have administered a survey with a random sample of 350 high school students determining their level of self-control and you have categorized your findings into low self-control and high self-control. You also asked the participants whether they have ever been in contact with the criminal justice system (yes/no). Now you want to learn whether there is indeed a relationship between low self-control and criminal behavior. The results of your survey are presented in the table below. You set your alpha level at 0.05.
a. .Identify the independent and dependent variables and indicate the level of measurement for each variable.
b. Compute the percentages for every cell.
c. State your null hypothesis and your alternative hypotheses.
d. Compute the degrees of freedom.
e. State your decision rule.
f. Compute expected frequencies for each cell.
g. Compute chi square.
h.Interpret your findings.
$\begin{array}{c}\begin{array}{|l|}\hline \\\\\hline \text {Yes}\\\hline \text {No}\\\hline \\\hline \end{array}\begin{array}{l|}\hline \text {LoW self-}\\ \text {control}\\\hline 57 \\\hline 63 \\\hline 120 \\\hline\end{array}\begin{array}{l|}\hline \text {High self-}\\ \text {control}\\\hline69 \\ \hline 161 \\\hline 230 \\ \hline\end{array}\begin{array}{l|}\hline\\\\\hline 126 \\\hline 224 \\\hline 350 \\\hline\end{array} \end{array}$