In 1970 59 of college freshmen thought that capital punishme

In 1970, 59% of college freshmen thought that capital punishment should be abolished; by 2005, the percentage had dropped to 35%. Is the difference real, or can it be explained by chance? Will your answer change if instead of difference, you look at the decrease? You may assume that the percentages are based on two independent simple random samples, each of size 1,000.

Solution

Compute the p value of 2-proportion for estimating difference. The Minitab output declares the p valu eto be 0.000. This is less than the assumed significance level of alpha=0.05. Therefore, reject null hypothesis to conclude that there i ssignificant difference in opinion regarding abolishment of capital punishment.