Demographic Analysis of MCC Students FALL 2008
Mesa Community College Psychology Department
Demographic Analysis of MCC Students FALL 2008 Brenda Fonseca
1
Demographic Analysis of MCC Students – FALL 2008 Summary Highlights 1. Average age of all students was 25.6 years with a range from 11 years up to 81 years old. 2. There were significantly more female students than male students (53% to 45%). On average, female students attempted fewer term hours than male students ( 8 hours compared to 9 hours). 3. Female students were significantly older than male students (26 years versus 25 years on average). 4. Asian and Black female students were significantly older than Asian and Black male students. No gender age difference was found for any of the other ethnic groups. Also, Hispanic and “Other” students (both male and female) were significantly younger than Black, Asian, or White students. 5. While males attempted more credit hours than females, the female students had a significantly higher success ratio. 6. Older students attempted and completed more hours than younger students. Students older than 30 years had the highest success ratios. 7. Black and American Indian students had the lowest success ratios while Asian and White students had the highest. Hispanic students were in the middle. 8. There was no interaction between ethnicity and gender for success. In other words, males had slightly lower success ratios than females across all ethnic groups
Notes: Success was defined as the ratio of number of hours earned to number of hours attempted. A value of 1.0 indicates the highest success level. All results listed were statistically significant at an alpha level of at least 0.05.
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1: Age Some interesting facts are that the oldest student that attended MCC during this semester was 81 and the average age was 25.6 years old. It looks like age is definitely positively skewed, meaning most of the students were down in the lower range and there are a small number of outliers at the older ages. Also, the kurtosis is quite high which indicates possible outliers. I would like to find out what a minimum age of “0” means since I would assume that 14 or 15 years of age is the youngest students that we have. I think this data should be recoded as missing data. For terms attempted it looks like the least was 0 hours and the most was 28 hours. The data do not look skewed and the kurtosis is a -1, meaning that it is a flat distribution compared to the normal curve. For terms completed, again the minimum was 0 hours and the maximum was 28 hours. There is a slight positive skew to the data but not enough to violate the normality assumption
Descriptive Statistics Std. N Statistic Age
Minimum Maximum Statistic
Statistic
Mean
Deviation
Statistic
Statistic
Skewness
Kurtosis
Statistic Std. Error Statistic Std. Error
22088
0
81
25.60
9.973
1.874
.016
3.501
.033
22088
0
28
8.46
4.463
.100
.016
-1.096
.033
Term Earned Hours
22088
0
28
6.69
4.268
.452
.016
-.676
.033
Valid N (listwise)
22088
Term Attempted Hours
I went in and selected all cases that had an age less than 14 and then went to analyze, reports, case summaries to find that there were 24 cases that had an age less than 14. I resorted the data by listing age in an ascending order and found that there were 14 students listed as 0 age. The youngest age after that was 11. I decided that it was possible for an 11 year old to enroll – although quite unusual, but that the 0 values should be coded as missing values.
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2: Gender For the Fall 2008 semester at MCC, 53% of the students were female, 45% were male and 2% were other or unknown. Females attempted 8.03 term hours (SD = 4.4) and males attempted 8.98 term hours (SD = 4.4). The group identified as “other gender” (n=105) attempted 7.73 hours (SD = 4.4) and Unknown gender (n=316) attempted 7.99 hours (SD = 4.6). Gender Cumulative Frequency Valid
Female
Percent
Valid Percent
Percent
11714
53.0
53.0
53.0
Male
9953
45.1
45.1
98.1
Other
105
.5
.5
98.6
Unknown
316
1.4
1.4
100.0
22088
100.0
100.0
Total
5
Average number of Terms Attempted by Gender
6
3: Age and Gender I ran an independent samples t-test on age and gender out of curiosity and found that the female students are significantly older than the male students, t(21655)=11.528, p
Demographic Analysis of MCC Students FALL 2008 Brenda Fonseca
1
Demographic Analysis of MCC Students – FALL 2008 Summary Highlights 1. Average age of all students was 25.6 years with a range from 11 years up to 81 years old. 2. There were significantly more female students than male students (53% to 45%). On average, female students attempted fewer term hours than male students ( 8 hours compared to 9 hours). 3. Female students were significantly older than male students (26 years versus 25 years on average). 4. Asian and Black female students were significantly older than Asian and Black male students. No gender age difference was found for any of the other ethnic groups. Also, Hispanic and “Other” students (both male and female) were significantly younger than Black, Asian, or White students. 5. While males attempted more credit hours than females, the female students had a significantly higher success ratio. 6. Older students attempted and completed more hours than younger students. Students older than 30 years had the highest success ratios. 7. Black and American Indian students had the lowest success ratios while Asian and White students had the highest. Hispanic students were in the middle. 8. There was no interaction between ethnicity and gender for success. In other words, males had slightly lower success ratios than females across all ethnic groups
Notes: Success was defined as the ratio of number of hours earned to number of hours attempted. A value of 1.0 indicates the highest success level. All results listed were statistically significant at an alpha level of at least 0.05.
2
3
1: Age Some interesting facts are that the oldest student that attended MCC during this semester was 81 and the average age was 25.6 years old. It looks like age is definitely positively skewed, meaning most of the students were down in the lower range and there are a small number of outliers at the older ages. Also, the kurtosis is quite high which indicates possible outliers. I would like to find out what a minimum age of “0” means since I would assume that 14 or 15 years of age is the youngest students that we have. I think this data should be recoded as missing data. For terms attempted it looks like the least was 0 hours and the most was 28 hours. The data do not look skewed and the kurtosis is a -1, meaning that it is a flat distribution compared to the normal curve. For terms completed, again the minimum was 0 hours and the maximum was 28 hours. There is a slight positive skew to the data but not enough to violate the normality assumption
Descriptive Statistics Std. N Statistic Age
Minimum Maximum Statistic
Statistic
Mean
Deviation
Statistic
Statistic
Skewness
Kurtosis
Statistic Std. Error Statistic Std. Error
22088
0
81
25.60
9.973
1.874
.016
3.501
.033
22088
0
28
8.46
4.463
.100
.016
-1.096
.033
Term Earned Hours
22088
0
28
6.69
4.268
.452
.016
-.676
.033
Valid N (listwise)
22088
Term Attempted Hours
I went in and selected all cases that had an age less than 14 and then went to analyze, reports, case summaries to find that there were 24 cases that had an age less than 14. I resorted the data by listing age in an ascending order and found that there were 14 students listed as 0 age. The youngest age after that was 11. I decided that it was possible for an 11 year old to enroll – although quite unusual, but that the 0 values should be coded as missing values.
4
2: Gender For the Fall 2008 semester at MCC, 53% of the students were female, 45% were male and 2% were other or unknown. Females attempted 8.03 term hours (SD = 4.4) and males attempted 8.98 term hours (SD = 4.4). The group identified as “other gender” (n=105) attempted 7.73 hours (SD = 4.4) and Unknown gender (n=316) attempted 7.99 hours (SD = 4.6). Gender Cumulative Frequency Valid
Female
Percent
Valid Percent
Percent
11714
53.0
53.0
53.0
Male
9953
45.1
45.1
98.1
Other
105
.5
.5
98.6
Unknown
316
1.4
1.4
100.0
22088
100.0
100.0
Total
5
Average number of Terms Attempted by Gender
6
3: Age and Gender I ran an independent samples t-test on age and gender out of curiosity and found that the female students are significantly older than the male students, t(21655)=11.528, p
