Chapter 12

Question 1

Define: descriptive analysis

Answer 1

used when the researcher wants to describe the typical or average respondent. This respondent represents the population of interest

Question 2

What are the four functions of descriptive analysis?

Answer 2

1. summarize the data
2. apply understandable conceptualizations
3. communicate
4. generalize

Question 3

define: data summarization

Answer 3

the process of describing a data matrix by computing a small number of measures that describe the data set

Question 4

define: measures of central tendency

Answer 4

used to report a single piece of information that describes the typical response to a question

Question 5

define: measures of variability

Answer 5

used to reveal the typical dispersion of values in a data set

Question 6

define: mode

Answer 6

the value in a string of numbers that occurs most frequently

Question 7

define: median

Answer 7

the value whose occurrence lies in the middle of a set of ordered numbers

Question 8

define: mean

Answer 8

sometimes referred to as the “arithmetic mean”; the average of a set of numbers

Question 9

define: frequency distribution

Answer 9

reveals the number of occurrences of each value appears in a set

Question 10

define: range

Answer 10

identifies the minimum and maximum value in a set of numbers

Question 11

define: standard deviation

Answer 11

indicates the degree of variation in a way that can be translated into a bell-shaped curve distribution

Question 12

for nominal data, provide…

Answer 12

mode, frequency, and percentage distribution

Question 13

for ordinal data, provide…

Answer 13

mode, frequency, and percentage distribution

+ medians
+ cumulative percentage distributions

Question 14

for interval and ratio data, provide…

Answer 14

mean, variance, and standard deviation

Question 15

define: univariate analysis

Answer 15

analysis of one variable at a time

Question 16

define: skewness

Answer 16

measure of asymmetry about the mean

Question 17

True or false: we want to know to see if the sample data we collected proves some hypothesis we made

Answer 17

True

Question 18

define: statistically significant

Answer 18

the data should be within some margin of significance

Question 19

do we want data to be statistically significant?

Answer 19

YES

Question 20

define: multivariate

Answer 20

testing two variables at once