instructor then distributes the statistical table to each student. For this particular exercise, the table contained data on American households from 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 1993. Further, it was broken down into the two subgroups identified by the Census Bureau: family and nonfamily households. Within the former, data were given for all families, married-couple families, male householder families, and female householder families, and for each of these, the data were provided for those with and those without children. Among the nonfamilies, totals were given and, again, broken down by male and female householder. For all categories described above, both raw data and percents were included. (Census Bureau definitions of household, family, and nonfamily were included in a note at the bottom of the table.)
For introductory students, this table then presents a reasonably complex challenge to unpack. The students are asked to spend a few minutes individually familiarizing themselves with it, gaining a sense of the table’s contents and terminology. This preview step can help reduce the problem, once the students are assembled in small groups in the next step, of those students who are less comfortable with statistical data being overwhelmed by others in their group who offer hasty interpretations. Another strategy to address this problem is for the instructor to ask each student - before moving into the samll groups - to identify, by marking on her or his graph, important or interesting trends s/he observes in the table.
Next, the instructor assembles the class in small groups, with approximately 4-6 students in each group, and asks each one to appoint a recorder. Using the brainstorming list as a starting point, each group discusses what the data suggest about the changes in the structure of the American family. Relying on the table to provide supporting statistics and dates, each group constructs a specific statement that highlights an important change in the structure of American households. The statement, comprised of one or two sentences, should be written down by the recorder. The class reconvene as a whole and each group is asked to read its statements aloud to the rest of the class, including exactly where in the table the statistics may be found. For example, given the table used in this exercise, one of the statements might be “Between 1970 and 1993, the proportion of married-couple families in the United States steadily decreased, from 70.5 percent of all households to 55.2 percent. This can be found on Line 5.”
The purpose here is two-fold. Given the profusion of statistics in the media and their frequent manipulation, careful examination of the table gives the student practical experience with the complexity of real-world data and thus ideally an appreciation for it. More importantly, writing a precise, carefully-worded statement that incorporates statistics illustrates to the students in a direct fashion how rarely they encounter such precision and carefulness in the media. Thus, the experience is meant to heighten their ability to be savvy consumers of statistics in the media.
Before moving onto the reading in the next step, the instructor will want to focus the class’s attention on the data in the table that specifically relates to the reading. Alternatively, if one of the groups cover these data, the instructor will want to spend some extra time with them being certain all students understand their interpretation and meaning. Given the reading used in this particular example examines the issue of single-mother families, the the instructor directs the class to the data referring to those families. The students should observe that between 1970 and 1993, the percentage of single-mother families (with children under 18) increased from 4.5% of all households to 7.5%. The instructor will want to point out that reasonable people can disagree whether this represents a substantial increase or not, and individuals may emphasize (or omit) certain statistics to support their point of view. The point of this step, however, is to emphasize the importance of clearly understanding what the data represent and, as indicated above, accuracy in their presentation. For example, the data above represent an increase of 3 percentage points (4.5 to 7.5), but a 67 percent increase. Additionally, the number of these families rose from 2.9 million to 7.2 million (an increase of 148%). The table doesn’t show what percentage of all families these single-mother families represent, but the numbers are given such that it could be calculated. For example, in 1993, 7.226 million divided by 68.144 million is 10.6 percent. Such a discussion will reveal to the students how, depending on how one presents the data, very different conclusions may be drawn about the increase in and prevalence of single-mother families.
In the next step, the students will be asked to read a short article on the changing structure of the American fami