Question 9.46

9.46 Students explain statistical data.

The National Survey of Student Engagement conducts surveys to study various aspects of undergraduate education.20 In a recent survey, students were asked if they needed to explain the meaning of numerical or statistical data in a written assignment. Among the first-year students, 9,697 responded positively while 13,514 seniors responded positively. A total of 13,171 first-year students and 16,997 seniors from 622 U.S. four-year colleges and universities responded to the survey.

  1. Construct the two-way table of counts.
  2. State an appropriate null hypothesis that can be tested with these data.
  3. Perform the significance test and summarize the results. What do you conclude?
  4. The sample sizes here are very large, so even relatively small effects will be detected through a significance test. Do you think that the difference in percents is important and/or interesting? Explain your answer.