An Effect of Unemployment to rape - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages Alternative Hypothesis: There is a statistically significant relationship between the rates of rape and unemployment Research Design and Sample The aim of this study is to test for a significant relationship between the rate of rape and rate of unemployment. To do this rape and unemployment data from each of the 50 states will be analyzed for the year 2010. Data Collection The independent variable for this study was the unemployment rate. This is a percentage value calculated from the division of the number of unemployed people by the labor force. Someone is considered to be unemployed if they are above 16 years of age who had no employment during the period but was available and desired to work. In contrast an individual is employed if they are over 16 and worked for at least one hour during the reference period. In general the reference period is one week. The labor force is the total number of people considered to be unemployed or employed, For this study statistics on the unemployment and employment levels for each of the 50 states were analyzed for the 2010 period. Information was gathered from the Business First database (available at: http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/datacenter/state-employment-2010.html). The database gave the average number of people employed and unemployed for the year 2010; this was derived from information collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics how were the data collected? be more specific here and as a consequence represented the mean value from 12 months of data. As a consequence, the unemployment rate could be calculated by adding the employment and unemployment levels together (to provide the labor force value) and then dividing the unemployment level by the labor force to give a percentage of the labor force which was unemployed. This value is the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate was determined independently for each of the 50 states. The dependent variable for this study was forcible rape per 100,000 population. For this, the FBI crime statistics from 2010 were used (available at: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl05.xls). These statistics considered many different types of crime including forcible rape in each of the states and included the number of reported incidences of rape as well as the estimated total of rape cases. The estimated total number of rapes was used for this study. Aggravated rape is defined as is the forcible sexual penetration of a woman as well as assault with this intent or attempted but not successful rape. Each incident of either rape or attempted rape was recorded as an offense within the database. Statutory rape was not included in the database and as a consequence was not part of this study. Analysis As there is no experimental manipulation of either variable, cause and effect cannot be directly tested, consequently, the analysis needs to test for correlation. In order to do this, a statistical test for correlation needs to be undertaken. To test whether there is a significant relationship between rape and unemployment rate a Pearson Product-Moment Correlation will be conducted. This test looks for a linear relationship between two variables and can describe a positive relationship, negative relationship or absence of relationship. The Pearson correlation coefficient is known as r and is a measure of how closely the data points are to the line of best fit that is described by the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation. A value of below zero indicates a negative correlation between the two variables (in this case rape and unemployment), a value above zero indicates a positive relationship, and a value close to zero indicates an absence of relati ...Download file to see next pages Read More