B1. For these exercises, you will be using the SPSS dataset Polit2SetA, which contains a number of variables relating to material hardships and social–environmental health risks. Eight variables in this file (from utilcut to badstove, which are Variables #25–32) are responses to a series of questions about current housing problems for the women in this sample—for example, whether or not they had their utilities cut off, had vermin in the household, had unreliable heat, and so forth. The variable housprob (Variable #33) is a count of the total number of times the women said “yes” to these eight questions. We will use this variable to create groups of women with different numbers of housing problems, so begin by running basic descriptive statistics on housprob, using the SPSS Frequencies program with Descriptive Statistics.

Then answer these questions:

(a) What is the range on this variable, and what is the minimum and maximum value?

(b) What is the mean, median, and mode?

(c) Comment on the symmetry/skewness of the distribution.

(d) What percentage of women had zero problems?

One problem? What does the frequency distribution suggest about forming groups on the basis of number of housing problems?