This week we have been using SPSS to analyze the statistics from an “EcoTypes” survey that was created last semester with my ENVS 220 class, as well as data from an international environmental survey from 2010. For the EcoTypes data, I ran correlations between answers to specific questions. Using the questions with the highest correlations, I came up with a few Big Words to describe the type of people that answered those questions.
For example, the group of questions/ideas with the highest correlations were those who felt strongly about surprises/variety, idea diversity, good times, risks/adventures, and fun/pleasure. I associated all of these with the clear morals of most protagonists in heroic stories, so I named this type of person a “Classic Hero.” Conversely, the second highest group of correlated answers included the desire for money, importance, admiration from others, success, and being in charge. My first thought with these words and ideas was the phrase “the big boss man.” I liked this because it implied a bit of sarcasm but made it clear that status was very important. The only thing I changed was shortening it to “Big Boss” in order to remove gender from the equation.
I found it a littler harder to find words that fit my results for the international data that we dealt with. I compared Japan with itself. The highest corresponding group believed in higher taxes, prices, and a cut to the standard of living (and believed it was okay to do even if no one else was doing it) , which brought me to “individual spending”. The second highest included answers similar to individual and industry air pollution is bad, and the rising world temperature is caused by climate change. I boiled this down to “pollution matters.” Unlike the ecotypes surveys, these were very nuanced answers and didn’t really make clear distinctions between ways that people thought. This made it more difficult to create words that fit all of the answers to the questions that correlated. I think the words or phrases that I came up with were good enough for the first try to learn how, but definitely need to be re-worked for later use.
I didn’t think that we were going to be doing any data analysis in a theory class but it has actually be very interesting to see the ways in which theories can be developed or debunked using the data. Not to mention that I have a better feel for SPSS after just two class periods to remind me!