1. The examples in this chapter suggest that students’ home environments may affect their school performance. You may wonder, however, whether it is the educational environment of the home that is...

1. The examples in this chapter suggest that students’ home environments may affect their school performance. You may wonder, however, whether it is the educational environment of the home that is important or if it is the financial resources of the home that are important. The file “exercise 4, grades, ed, income.sav” has simulated data that will allow a test of this question. (The data are on the Web site [www.tzkeith. com] under Chapter 2. Also included are Excel and plain text versions of the data.) Included are measures of grade-point average (Grades, a standard 100-point scale), parents’ highest level of education (ParEd, in years), and family income (Income, in thousands of dollars). Regress Grades on Parent Education and Family Income. Be sure to also check the summary statistics. Is the overall regression statistically significant? Are both variables—Parent Education and Family Income—statistically significant predictors of students’ Grades? Interpret the results of this regression. Interpret both the unstandardized and the standardized regression coefficients. Which interpretation is more meaningful, the
b’s or the b’s? Why? Which home variable appears to be more important for students’ school performance?