Question

A sociologist in North Carolina is studying the effect of having children within the first two years of marriage on the divorce rate.  Using hospital birth records, she selects a simple random sample of 200 couples who had children within the first two years of marriage.  Following up on these couples, she finds that 80 couples are divorced within five years.

What is the proportion of couples in the sample who are divorced within five years?

Suppose only one third of all the couples who DID NOT have children within the first two years of marriage are divorced within five years. Is there sufficient evidence that couples who had children within the first two years of marriage are more likely to be divorced within five years than couples who did not have children within the first two years of marriage? Follow the four steps of hypothesis testing (Hypotheses, Test Statistic, P-value, Conclusion) and use a significance level of 0.05.

Construct a 95% confidence interval for the divorce rate within five years of marriage for all the couples who had children within the first two years of marriage.

Answer 1