Gender differences in work hours, weight satisfaction, and diet choices

¶ … Statistics

This survey was conducted as part of a class project to gather sample data on a variety of issues. The data will be used to perform statistical analysis regarding the correlation between differences in men and women. The 37 questions start with basic demographic data such as age and education and move on to cover attitudes and agreement with various topics. For each hypothesis, I will show some statistical figures along with charts to show whether or not there was any correlation present.

This survey involved 291 participants. 130 of these were male and 161 were female. Their average age is 32.7 years old. The males had an average age of 33.7 and the females had an average age of 32.2. Six of the participants had a PhD or professional degree and 85 had completed high school or received a GED. There were 102 married participants and 157 single. 138 of them lived in households with children under 18.

For my first hypothesis, I expect men to work more hours outside the home. I expect a relatively weak correlation, but slightly positive. Secondly, I expect women to be less satisfied with their current weight. Again, I expect a slightly positive correlation. Third, I expect women to eat a more healthy diet. I would expect a moderate correlation with this. My fourth hypothesis is that women are more likely to have considered becoming a foster parent. Of these four, I expect the foster parenting question to be the most strongly correlated with gender.

The correlation between the hours men and women spend working outside the home is 0.074. In other words, there is a weak correlation. The correlation leans in the direction of men having more hours. Males also had a higher average of 30.6 hours compared to 27.8 hours for females. This suggests that there is a small likelihood that males spend more hours working outside the home. Interestingly, however, only females reported over 60 hours per week. The scatterplot below shows the hours worked with females on the top axis:

Mean

29.0567

Standard Error

1.132015

Median

40

Mode

40

Standard Deviation

19.31074

Sample Variance

Kurtosis

-1.0554

Skewness

-0.26386

Range

80

Minimum

0

Maximum

80

Sum

Count

The correlation between the satisfaction with the weight in men and women is 0.097. As expected, this is also a weak correlation, but it does indicate that males are more likely to be satisfied with their weight. 46.6% of males and 37.3% of females indicated that they were satisfied with their weight. The chart below shows females in pink and men in blue. The top axis represents the number that are not satisfied with their weight and the lower axis, the ones that are.

Mean

1.584192

Standard Error

0.028942

Median

2

Mode

2

Standard Deviation

0.49371

Sample Variance

0.243749

Kurtosis

-1.89513

Skewness

-0.34342

Range

1

Minimum

1

Maximum

2

Sum

Count

The correlation between men and women and their likelihood to think about becoming a foster parent is 0.11. This is still a somewhat low correlation, but this hypothesis is the strongest of the four. Men gave an average rating of 3.8 and women rated themselves at 4.6. This suggests that women are fairly more likely to have considered foster parenting. Again, the following chart shows a comparison of the number of responses given.

Mean

4.268041

Standard Error

0.201578

Median

3

Mode

1

Standard Deviation

3.438671

Sample Variance

11.82446

Kurtosis

-1.35575

Skewness

0.488023

Range

9

Minimum

1

Maximum

10

Sum

Count