Researchers spent lots of time and money weighing the stuff put out for recyclin

Question

Researchers spent lots of time and money weighing the stuff put out for recycling in two neighborhoods in a city, call them Upper Crust and Lower Mid. The individuals here are households, because trash and recycling pickup are done for residences, not for people one at a time. The variable measured was the weight in pounds of the curbside recycling basket each week. The Upper Crust households contributed more pounds per week on the average than did the folk in Lower Mid. Someone noticed that Upper Crust recycling baskets contained lots of heavy glass wine bottles. In Lower Mid, they put out lots of light plastic soda bottles and light metal beer and soda cans. Which of the following variables do you think would have provided a good measure to identify the households that are more committed to recycling? Whether or not the household participates in the recycling Percentage of a household's recyclable waste that is actually recycled Weight of the material put out for recycling Percentage of households participating in recycling Variables need to be characteristics of the individuals (households). In Example 1, we were told weight is not a good variable to use because different types of items have very different weights (wine bottles vs soda bottles). If we want to measure commitment to recycling, what is a messy way to find out?

Explanation / Answer

Here we have to keep in mind that there could be households which have got greater amount of recyclable waste than others and therefore even a 1% of their waste recycled could be more than 10 % of the recyclable waste of the later household.

Therefore we cannot have the variable as the weight of the material put out for recycling.

Also households participating in household does not show how much they are recycling. It is possible that some household is participating but does only 10% of their waste recycled therefore it would mean that they are although doing it but are not well committed to it. The only good parameter variable which we should consider here to judge the strength of commitment towards recycling should be the variable : Percentage of the household's recyclable waste that is actually recycled. because even if a household has a lot of recyclable waste, the % of that household waste that is recycled would be considered which could be lower than the small household which initially had a lower amount of recyclable waste.

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