For today's assignment, I would like for you to answer the following questions. Please jot your answers down on a spare sheet of paper and turn it in to your TA at the end of the session. You will be using the same data set that you worked with on Friday.

One issue that has received a lot of attention over the past few decades concerns the relationship between personality and physical health. Specifically, psychologists have proposed a variety of constructs (such as the so-called Type A personality) that have been linked to poorer health outcomes.

For today’s exercise I would like for you to attempt to identify some aspects of people’s personalities that might be linked to physical health. In the questionnaire exercise you completed last week, you answered some personality questionnaires as well as some questions designed to assess your health (the “PILL” questionnaire). Your goal is to (a) create a composite measure that captures some aspect of physical health using this measure and (b) to relate it to a composite measure of any personality traits of your choosing.

Please note that I’m giving you some freedom in how you approach these matters. For example, you could create a composite measure of gastro-intestinal troubles by averaging responses to items such as pill21, pill22, pill23, pill25, etc. Alternatively, you could create a composite measure of respiratory problems by combing responses to items like pill11, pill12, pill13, etc. Even better, you could focus on multiple kinds of physical symptoms.

You also have some freedom to consider the personality qualities that might be of interest. For example, if you wanted to create a composite of strikes you as something “type a”-like, you could combine items such as bfi39, bfi28 (reverse coded), etc.

Have some fun with this. Recall that there is a link on the class web page to the questionnaire—a sheet that explains what the various columns in the SPSS data file represetnt. As you work on it, prepare on a separate page something to turn in that contains answer to the following questions:

1. Which constructs did you try to assess using these data? How did you create your composite variables?

2. What were the means and standard deviations of your composite variables?

3. What was the relationship between the variables of interest? Answer this question both via scatterplot and via correlation.

4. Draw some brief conclusions based on your data analyses.