According to Assessing the Validity of the PostMaterialism

Chapter 0, Problem 14.4

(choose chapter or problem)

According to Assessing the Validity of the PostMaterialism Index (American Political Science Review [1999]: 649664), one may be able to predict an individuals level of support for ecology based on demographic and ideological characteristics. The multiple regression model proposed by the authors was where the variables are defined as follows y ecology score (higher values indicate a greater concern for ecology) x1 age times 10 x2 income (in thousands of dollars) x3 gender (1 male, 0 female) x4 race (1 white, 0 nonwhite) x5 education (in years) x6 ideology (4 conservative, 3 right of center, 2 middle of the road, 1 left of center, and 0 liberal) x7 social class (4 upper, 3 upper middle, 2 middle, 1 lower middle, 0 lower) x8 postmaterialist (1 if postmaterialist, 0 otherwise) x9 materialist (1 if materialist, 0 otherwise) a. Suppose you knew a person with the following characteristics: a 25-year-old, white female with a college degree (16 years of education), who has a $32,000-per-year job, is from the upper middle class and considers herself left of center, but who is neither a materialist nor a postmaterialist. Predict her ecology score. b. If the woman described in Part (a) were Hispanic rather than white, how would the prediction change? c. Given that the other variables are the same, what is the estimated mean difference in ecology score for men and women? d. How would you interpret the coefficient of x2? e. Comment on the numerical coding of the ideology and social class variables. Can you suggest a better way of incorporating these two variables into the model?