4.2.3.2 Data handling and analysis Flashcards
What is quantitative data?
Information that can be measured and written down with numbers
Name cons of quantitative data
- Lacks details
Name pros of quantitative data
- Quick and easy to analyse
- Easy to compare
- Immediately quantifiable
- Measured objectively
What is qualitative data?
Descriptive information that is expressed in words
Name cons of qualitative data
- Time consuming/difficult to analyse (lots of detail)
- Hard to make comparisons
- Based on subjective interpretation of language
- Not immediately quantifiable, data has to be transformed and only quantifiable if data is put into categories and frequency is counted
Name pros of qualitative data
- Lots of detail given
- Allows more depth of analysis
What is primary data?
Information that a researcher has collected him/herself for a specific purpose
e.g. data from an experiment or observation
Name pros of primary data
- More relevant to topic of research = degree of accuracy is high
- Greater validity ∵ study is designed and carried out for main purpose of research (collected objectively)
Name cons of primary data
- Expensive to obtain
- Limited to time, place and no. of participants
- Secondary data can come from different sources & give more range and detail
What is secondary data?
Information that someone else has collected
e.g. the work of other psychologists or government statistics
Name pros of secondary data
- Easy and quick to collect
- Large variety of it
Name cons of secondary data
- Data may be unreliable
- May be out of date
What is meta-analysis?
- A technique where researchers examine results of several studies
- Rather than conducting new research with participants
Name pro of meta-analysis
Reduce problem of sample size
Name con of meta-analysis
Lots of conflicting results
What do descriptive statistics help to do?
Help simplify large amounts of data
Name 2 types of descriptive statistics
- Measures of Central Tendency
- Measures of Dispersion
Name pro of mean
- Most sensitive ∵ includes all values in data set within calculation
- More representative of data as whole
Name con of mean
- Easily distorted by extreme values
- = mean doesn’t represent the average of data set as a whole
Name pro of median
- Not affected by extreme scores
- More representative of overall data set
Name con of median
- Less sensitive then mean
- Not as representative as mean
Name pro of mode
For data that appears in categories = only method you can use
e.g. favourite desserts