Title: Comparing Means continued
Course: UGQuants (SSPS) > Section: Associations Between 2 Variables

Comparing means continued

What kind of explanations might you put forward for the associations shown in tables 10 and 11 below?

Table 10: Mean hours of housework per week by sex, UK

Sex | Mean hours of housework per week | N
Female | 13.7 | 5,969
Male | 6.2 | 4,652
All | 10.4 | 10,621

Source: UK Household Longitudinal Survey, 2009-10

Table 10 shows that, on average, women in the UK spend about twice as much time doing housework than men.

Table 11: Mean % adult (25 years and over) literacy by level of democracy, selected countries

Level of democracy | Mean % adult literacy | N
No vote | 77.7 | 20
Vote, no party alternation | 71.5 | 29
Vote and party alternation | 87.3 | 78
All | 82.2 | 127

Source: United Nations World Development Indicators, 2010

Table 11 shows that levels of adult literacy tend to be higher in countries that could clearly be defined as ‘democracies’, and are lowest among countries where citizens are formally given the right to vote, but in fact the party of government does not change. Note the much lower 'N' values in this table: the data represent countries of the world (in fact only a limited range of such countries) rather than large numbers of individuals as shown in tables 9 and 10.

You can compare means with the help of using SPSS by going to:

Analyse > Compare Means > Means