Question

At the time of admission to prison, correctional officers noted whether female African-American inmates had light skin tones or not, and denoted whether a prisoner was thin (in terms of body weight) or not. Another explanatory variable is the total sentencing components (“the number of counts for a crime an individual is charged with and sentenced for. For example, an individual who breaks into someone's house can be simultaneously charged with breaking and entering and criminal trespass, as well as, potentially, violation of probation. Each of these individual charges can carry a separate sentence component that contributes to the total sentence length”). The other explanatory variables should be self-evident. For some reason, the authors do not report the intercept coefficient, but the coefficient estimates (with the standard errors in parentheses), are reported below. Dependent Variable: Natural Logarithm of Time Served, In(time served) Explanatory Variables Light skin Thin Total sentencing components Parole arrest Conviction date Homicide Robbery Habitual felon Total infractions in prison Coefficients and Standard Errors in Parentheses -0.109 (0.040) -0.099 (0.021) 0.057 (0.004) 0.674 (0.047) -0.001 (0.000) 1.496 (0.070) 0.764 (0.046) 1.973 (0.111) 0.053 (0.002) 11,093 0.280 n R?

Answer 1

Option A is correct. Only the estimated cofficients on robbery, parole arrest and homicide are statistically significant and differenct from zero at the 5% level of significance.