Exercise 1

Below you can find the results of a logistic regression, based on survey data taken from the
European Social Survey (ESS, Spain, 2018). The DV is the variable Trust in Politicians, recording
whether or not Spanish citizens trust their politicians. The variable is coded as a dichotomy (0= “No
Trust”; 1= “Trust”). Our focal predictor is the left-right scale, ranging from 0 (=Left) to 10(=Right).
We control the relation for sex (1=female), education (Baseline= “Secondary level of education”),
Income (coded as a cardinal variable), and interest in politics (Baseline= “Very interested”).
a. Formulate a hypothesis about the relation between LR and Trust in politicians; usually
politicians of right are perceived as more trustable as they try to appear as the good ones and
speak a lot about security issues. So we can expect that the more you are of right the more
you trust
b. Comment on the regression table, focusing on the focal predictor; the log odds of our FP is
positive, that means that is higher that the log odds of our baseline, this is statistically
significant if we take into account the the p value, that is 0,05, so we are 95% confident of
this significance
c. Comment on the overall performance of the model; It must be noted that our model is not
performing very well, the strength of our model is very low, we have a Pseudo R” of 0.04 ,
anyway it still performs better than an empty model
d. Now comment the effect of the variable “Education”. The log odds of edu for lower
secondary is negative, that means that is lower than our baseline, the opposite is true for for
tertiary education , anyway none of this is statistically significant

Logistic regression Number of obs = 2,527

LR chi2(8) = 62.30
Prob > chi2 = 0.0000
Log likelihood = -682.64051 Pseudo R2 = 0.0436

trust_polit Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| [95% Conf. Interval]

female -.0157584 .1497088 -0.11 0.916 -.3091823 .2776655

edu_4
Lower secondary/Less than lower sec.. -.2027158 .2004796 -1.01 0.312 -.5956485 .1902169
Tertiary .1099632 .2079273 0.53 0.597 -.2975668 .5174933
Other 0 (empty)

income -.0671258 .0296243 -2.27 0.023 -.1251884 -.0090633

polintr
2. Quite interested -.1216249 .1974516 -0.62 0.538 -.5086229 .2653731
3. Hardly interested -.7173542 .2099665 -3.42 0.001 -1.128881 -.3058275
4. Not at all interested -1.679043 .3083732 -5.44 0.000 -2.283443 -1.074643

lrscale .0873041 .0308463 2.83 0.005 .0268464 .1477619

_cons -1.889396 .2968781 -6.36 0.000 -2.471266 -1.307525
Exercise 2
Following on the previous exercise, we now include in the model an interaction term between the
left-right ideological position (our focal predictor) and the variable income (Please notice that you
interpret interactions in logistic models exactly as you do in OLS models. The only exception is
that, of course, in logistic models we are dealing with probabilities, odds, log odds, and odds ratios).
a. Comment on the single constitutive terms of the interaction (left-right and income). How do
you interpret them? Starting from the coefficient of income, it represents the log odd of
income, it shows how the attitude of trust varies amond different level of income, keeping
constant our other interaction term equal to 0, that means you are of extremely left. In this
case we have a log odd of income that is -0.7 that means that is lower than our baseline. The
coefficient of LR should be read in the same way, it represent the log odd of LR keeping
income as a constant equal to 0, that means the lowest level of income and as it is positive, it
means that the log odd is higher than our baseline. The two anyway are not statistically
significant.
b. Now comment on the interaction term. We are interested in seeing if our focal predictor
(LR) varies across income, we have to look at our log odd c.income#c.lrscale, that is 0,002
that means that political orientation varies very little across different level of income. If we
look at the p value we see that this relation is clearly not statistically significant, not even
near to it.

trust_polit Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| [95% Conf. Interval]

female -.015388 .1497308 -0.10 0.918 -.308855 .2780791

edu_4
Lower secondary/Less than lower sec.. -.1997341 .2008079 -0.99 0.320 -.5933104 .1938421
Tertiary .1119854 .2081263 0.54 0.591 -.2959348 .5199055
Other 0 (empty)

polintr
2. Quite interested -.1218612 .1974641 -0.62 0.537 -.5088836 .2651612
3. Hardly interested -.7177089 .2099443 -3.42 0.001 -1.129192 -.3062256
4. Not at all interested -1.678312 .3083334 -5.44 0.000 -2.282635 -1.07399

income -.0798019 .0601551 -1.33 0.185 -.1977038 .0381

lrscale .0745879 .060834 1.23 0.220 -.0446445 .1938204

c.income#c.lrscale .0026402 .0108889 0.24 0.808 -.0187018 .0239821

_cons -1.830558 .3825677 -4.78 0.000 -2.580377 -1.080739

Exercise 3
Below you can find the results of an OLS regression model. We are using survey data from the ESS
(Spain, 2018). The DV is a measure of Trust in the European Parliament (0=No trust; 10=Complete
Trust). Our focal predictor is an indicator of Trust in National Parliament (0=No trust; 10=Complete
Trust). We control the relation for: left-right ideological position (0=Left; 10=Right), education
(0=No tertiary education; 1=Tertiary education), sex (1=female), interest in politics (Baseline=Very
interested), income (cardinal).
a. Formulate a hypothesis about the relation between your focal predictor and your dependent
variable; We can imagine that the more you trust nat parliaments, the more you trust
European parliament, this if we take into account the trust that people can have in general
toward institutions
b. Comment on the regression table focusing on your focal predictor; the coefficient of our
focal predictor is 0.6, that means that there is a positive relation, practically speaking that
means that when trust for nat par goes up, trust for European par goes up to. If we look at
our t value and p value we see that this relation is statistically significant, and we can affirm
that with a 99,99 % of confidence, so we can accept our hyphothesis.
c. Now assess the effect of the variable Interest in Politics; as it is a dummy variable we have
to compare our results with a baseline, that in this case is the category highly interested in
politics, we have a positive relation for categories 2 and 3, but they are not statistically
significant, while we have a negative relation for category 4, that means that when interest
for politics, that means that when disinterest for politics goes up, trust for parl goes down.
d. Comment on the overall performance of the model; it is trustable, in this case there is no
difference between the two R2, it can describe almost 40% of the cases taken into account,
and also f statistics tell us that the model is performing better than an empty model

. regress trstep c.trstprl c.lrscale i.edu_dum3 female i.polintr c.income if country=="ES"

Source SS df MS Number of obs = 2,351

F(8, 2342) = 191.80
Model 5835.36277 8 729.420346 Prob > F = 0.0000
Residual 8906.50027 2,342 3.80294631 R-squared = 0.3958
Adj R-squared = 0.3938
Total 14741.863 2,350 6.27313321 Root MSE = 1.9501

trstep Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

trstprl .6011273 .0164692 36.50 0.000 .5688315 .633423

lrscale .0424445 .0175951 2.41 0.016 .007941 .076948
1.edu_dum3 .2227395 .0980206 2.27 0.023 .0305233 .4149557
female -.0020081 .0814844 -0.02 0.980 -.1617972 .157781

polintr
2. Quite interested .1156915 .1278151 0.91 0.365 -.134951 .3663341
3. Hardly interested .005734 .12537 0.05 0.964 -.2401137 .2515818
4. Not at all interested -.2340891 .1418903 -1.65 0.099 -.5123328 .0441546

income -.0247272 .0159961 -1.55 0.122 -.0560953 .0066408

_cons 1.854061 .162542 11.41 0.000 1.53532 2.172802
Exercise 4
Following on the previous exercise, we have now included an interaction term between our focal
predictor (Trust in national Parliament) and the Left-Right ideological position of Spanish citizens.
a. Formulate a hypothesis about the interaction. Do you expect that the effect of your focal
predictor varies across different ideological positions of Spanish citizens?
b. Comment the results of the interaction, taking into account all the necessary estimated
parameters; our interaction coefficient rappresenta come varia la fiducia per ilparlamento al
variare dell’orientamento politico. -0-02 è la differenza tra la fiducia per il parlamento tra
chi è di estrema sinistra e chi è di estrema destra,
c. Make use of the scatterplot to explore better your results. Is your hypothesis
rejected/confirmed?

. regress trstep c.trstprl##c.lrscale i.edu_dum3 female i.polintr c.income if country=="ES"

Source SS df MS Number of obs = 2,351

F(9, 2341) = 170.79
Model 5843.00443 9 649.222714 Prob > F = 0.0000
Residual 8898.85861 2,341 3.80130654 R-squared = 0.3964
Adj R-squared = 0.3940
Total 14741.863 2,350 6.27313321 Root MSE = 1.9497

trstep Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

trstprl .6412066 .0327138 19.60 0.000 .5770556 .7053577

lrscale .074829 .0288297 2.60 0.010 .0182946 .1313634

c.trstprl#c.lrscale -.0088682 .0062547 -1.42 0.156 -.0211335 .0033972

1.edu_dum3 .2221237 .0980004 2.27 0.024 .029947 .4143004

female -.0051266 .0814965 -0.06 0.950 -.1649395 .1546863

polintr
2. Quite interested .1187166 .1278054 0.93 0.353 -.1319069 .3693402
3. Hardly interested .0059221 .125343 0.05 0.962 -.2398728 .2517171
4. Not at all interested -.2330952 .1418615 -1.64 0.100 -.5112824 .0450919

income -.0243621 .0159948 -1.52 0.128 -.0557275 .0070033

_cons 1.713953 .1901934 9.01 0.000 1.340988 2.086918
 .7 .65 Average Marginal Effects of trstprl with 95% CIs
Effects on Linear Prediction
.55 .5
.45 .6

0. Left 1. 1 2. 2 3. 3 4. 4 5. 5 6. 6 7. 7 8. 8 9. 9 10. Right

Placement on left right scale