Passion Driven Stats

This is a course-related blog for Passion Driven Stats MOOC provided by Wesleyan University through Coursera.org

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Frequency chart - Polity Score

Assignment 2 asks that we write code to generate a frequency chart from our data. All my variables contain unique values for each observation - for a frequency of 1. The only variable I'm posting here is polityscore - the number of unique values is low enough to make this a manageable frequency table. I have not adjusted for missing data.

Stata syntax: tab1 polityscore

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What is a Polity Score?

From the Polity IV Project - http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm

Brief Description: The Polity conceptual scheme is unique in that it examines concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority in governing institutions, rather than discreet and mutually exclusive forms of governance. This perspective envisions a spectrum of governing authority that spans from fully institutionalized autocracies through mixed, or incoherent, authority regimes (termed “anocracies”) to fully institutionalized democracies.  

The “Polity Score” captures this regime authority spectrum on a 21-point scale ranging from -10 (hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy).  

The Polity scores can also be converted to regime categories: we recommend a three-part categorization of “autocracies” (-10 to -6), “anocracies” (-5 to +5 and the three special values: -66, -77, and -88), and “democracies” (+6 to +10); see “Global Trends in Governance, 1800-2011” above. 

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GDP is defined as the measure of the total output of a country that takes the gross domestic product and divides it by the number of people in the country. The per capita GDP is especially useful when comparing one country to another because it shows the relative performance of the countries. A...

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I had to look this up, too. LOL

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Variable names - OK. Variable meanings - huh?

How do you analyze data when you don't know what it means? What the heck is a polity score? How is gross domestic product measured? Is this my "dumb American" side rearing it's ugly head? LOL

I had to do a bit of initial research to make sure my research questions were appropriate for the data. I had to look beyond the Gapminder codebook to learn more about the variables.

Once I understood everything, and after revising my research questions, I chose the following variables from the Gapminder dataset for my analysis:

country (unique identifier) - string variable, list of countries, 289 unique values

incomeperperson - continuous numeric variable

2010 Gross Domestic Product per capita in constant 2000 US$.

Work Development inflation but not the differences in the cost of living between countries has been taken into account.

femaleemployrate - numeric variable indicating the percentage of female employment, range from 11.3 - 83.3%

2007 female employees age 15+ (% of population)

Percentage of female population, age above 15, that has been employed during the given year.

internetuserate - numeric variable indicating the percentage of internet users ranging from .21 - 95.6%

2010 Internet users (per 100 people)

Internet users are people with access to the worldwide network.

polityscore - numeric variable, ranging from -10 to 10

2009 Democracy score (Polity)

Overall polity score from the Polity IV dataset, calculated by subtracting an autocracy score from a democracy score. The summary measure of a country's democratic and free nature. -10 is the lowest value, 10 the highest.

Also: From Polity IV Project - http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm Brief Description: The Polity conceptual scheme is unique in that it examines concomitant qualities of democratic and autocratic authority in governing institutions, rather than discreet and mutually exclusive forms of governance. This perspective envisions a spectrum of governing authority that spans from fully institutionalized autocracies through mixed, or incoherent, authority regimes (termed "anocracies") to fully institutionalized democracies. The "Polity Score" captures this regime authority spectrum on a 21-point scale ranging from -10 (hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy). The Polity scores can also be converted to regime categories: we recommend a three-part categorization of "autocracies" (-10 to -6), "anocracies" (-5 to +5 and the three special values: -66, -77, and -88), and "democracies" (+6 to +10); see "Global Trends in Governance, 1800-2011" above.

employrate - numeric variable indicating the percentage of employment, range from 32 - 83.2%

2007 total employees age 15+ (% of population)

Percentage of total population, age above 15, that has been employed  during the given year.

urbanrate - numeric variable indicating the percentage of population in urban areas, ranging from 10.4 - 100%

2008 urban population (% of total)

Urban population refers to people living in urban areas as defined by national statistical offices (calculated using World Bank population estimates and urban ratios from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects)

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Revised Research Questions

After learning more about the data in my Gapminder dataset, I've revised my research questions:

Are there differences in internet use, employment rate and female employment based on the type of government - autocratic, anocratic or democratic?

Is Internet use higher in countries with healthier economies?

Are Internet use, employment rate and female employment higher in countries with larger urban populations?

In research, I always struggle with the best way to word research questions so they sound interesting and engaging. I welcome any suggestions for making these questions sound more enticing. Otherwise, I'm pretty satisfied with this revised set of questions.

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Research questions

Image taken from http://www.goseolasvegas.com. This is not my image.

These are still tentative, but based on the data available in the Gapminder dataset, I have chosen the following research questions:

Is a country's gross domestic product associated with internet use rate?

Is there an association between a country's democratic and free nature and the number of Internet users?

Is there an association between a country's democratic and free nature and the rate of employment?*

Is there an association between a country's democratic and free nature and the rate of female employment?*

Is Internet use associated with electric consumption?*

Questions marked * indicates the related variable data in the Gapminder dataset were collected during different years (i.e., 2007 vs. 2010), so I'll need to be mindful of whether and how I can properly analyze the relationships.

I chose these questions because I am currently a researcher and my interests are in information technology and in women and science (particularly, IT) careers. While these questions do not directly tie with anything I'm currently researching, they are at least somewhat related. And who knows, maybe they'll give me some new ideas. :-)

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Welcome and Data Set

Welcome to my Tumblr blog for Passion Driven Statistics - an online course provided by Wesleyan University and delivered through Coursera.org. During this course, I will be working with the Gapminder dataset and performing my analyses using Stata for Mac.