Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

ANALYSIS OF QUANTITATIVE DATA

those who are under 30, 76.9 percent agree. From

the row percentages, you learn that a little over half

of those who agree are under 30 years old. From

column percentages, you learn that among the under-

30 people, more than 75 percent agree. The first

way of percentaging tells you about people with

specific attitudes; the second tells you about people

in specific age groups and lets you compare them.

Your hypothesis often tells you to look at either

the row or column percentages. When beginning,

you may want to calculate percentages each way

and practice interpreting what each says. For

example, your hypothesis is that a person’s age

affects his or her legal alcohol age attitude, and you

are interested in the age of people most/least sup-

portive. This suggests that you look at column per-

centages because you want to compare attitudes

across the different age groups. However, if your

interest is in describing the age makeup of groups

of people with different attitudes, then row per-

centages are appropriate. Perhaps you want to buy

TV advertising about the issue and you want to

know what age group will be viewing the com-

mercials. As Zeisel (1985:34) noted, whenever

one factor in a cross-tabulation can be considered

the cause of the other, the most illuminating

percentage will be obtained by computing per-

centages in the direction of the causal factor. So, if

age is your causal variable, create the percentage

table by rows.

Unfortunately, there is no “industry standard”

for putting the independent and dependent variable

in a percentage table as row or column, or for

percentage by row and column. A majority of

TABLE 1 Age Group by Attitude about Changing the Drinking Age,
Percentaged Tables

COLUMN-PERCENTAGED TABLE

AGE GROUP

61 and

ATTITUDE Under 30 30–45 46–60 Older TOTAL

Agree 76.9% 40.0% 11.4% 20.0% 36.6%

No opinion 11.5 40.0 28.6 13.3 24.8

Disagree 11 .5 20.0 60.0 66.7 38.6

Total 99.9% 100% 100% 100% 100%

(N) (26)* (25)* (35)* (15)* (101)*

Missing cases = 8

ROW-PERCENTAGED TABLE

AGE GROUP

61 and

ATTITUDE Under 30 30–45 46–60 Older TOTAL (N)

Agree 54.1% 27% 10.8% 8.1% 100.0% (37)
No opinion 12.0 40.0 40.0 8.0 100.0 (25)
Disagree 7 .7 1 2.8 53.8 25.6 99.9 (39)
Total 25.7% 24.8% 34.7% 14.9% 100.1% (101)
Missing cases = 8

*For percentaged tables, provide the number of cases or Non which percentages are computed in

parentheses near the total of 100%. This makes it possible to go back and forth from a percentaged

table to a raw count table and vice versa.