Data Handling and Analysis

Question 1

What is quantitative data?

Answer 1

Data occurring in numerical form

Question 2

What is qualitative data?

Answer 2

Data occurring in non-numerical form, expressing meaning, feelings and descriptions

Question 3

What is quantitative data used for?

Answer 3

Behaviour

Question 4

What is qualitative data used for?

Answer 4

Attitudes, opinions and beliefs

Question 5

What is more reliable, qualitative or quantitative data?

Answer 5

Quantitative

Question 6

What is a disadvantage of quantitative data?

Answer 6

Lacks detail

Question 7

What is an advantage of qualitative data?

Answer 7

Rich and detailed

Question 8

Where is qualitative data collected?

Answer 8

In a real life setting

Question 9

Where is quantitative data collected?

Answer 9

In an artificial setting

Question 10

How is qualitative data converted into quantitative data?

Answer 10

Through content analysis

Question 11

What kinds of techniques can be used to collect quantitative data?

Answer 11

Closed question questionnaires, experiments, observations, structured interviews

Question 12

What kind of techniques can be used to collect qualitative data?

Answer 12

Open question questionnaires, unstructured interviews, some experiments in the form of opinions/comments from participants

Question 13

What is primary data?

Answer 13

Data collected specifically towards a research aim that has not been published before

Question 14

What is secondary data?

Answer 14

Data originally collected towards another research aim that has been published before

Question 15

Why is primary data more reliable and valid?

Answer 15

Because it has not been manipulated in any way

Question 16

What is good about secondary data?

Answer 16

It is drawn from several sources so can help to give a clearer insight into a research area that primary data cannot

Question 17

What is a meta-analysis?

Answer 17

A process in which a large number of studies with the same research aim and methods are reviewed together are reviewed together and the combined data is tested by statistical techniques

Question 18

What is content analysis?

Answer 18

A method of quantifying qualitative data through the use of coding units

Question 19

What are 4 examples of coding units used in content analysis?

Answer 19

Character
Word
Theme
Time and Space

Question 20

What are the strengths of content analysis?

Answer 20

Turns qualitative data into quantitative so it can be analysed
Reliable, because coding units are not open to interpretation and so are easy to replicate
Easy to perform because it is cheap and also non-invasive (does not require direct contact with participants

Question 21

What are weaknesses of content analysis?

Answer 21

Does not identify causality, merely describes the data

Not done under controlled conditions

Question 22

What are the 6 steps to thematic analysis?

Answer 22

Familiarisation with the data
Coding 
Looking for themes
Reviewing the themes
Defining and naming the themes
Writing up

Question 23

What is familiarisation with the data?

Answer 23

Intensely reading the data to become immersed in its content

Question 24

What is coding?

Answer 24

Looking for features of the data important to answering the research question and generating codes for the features

Question 25

What is looking for themes?

Answer 25

Examining the codes and data to identify patterns of potential meaning (themes)

Question 26

What is reviewing the themes?

Answer 26

Seeing if the themes answer the research question. | Themes are refined which can involve splitting, combining or discarding one

Question 27

What is defining and naming the themes?

Answer 27

Detailed analysis of each theme to give each one an informative name

Question 28

What is writing up?

Answer 28

Combining together all the information gained from the analysis

Question 29

What are the three measures of central tendency?

Answer 29

Mean Median Mode

Question 30

What are advantages of the median?

Answer 30

Unaffected by 'freak' scores Easier to calculate than the mean Can be used for ordinal data but the mean can't

Question 31

What are disadvantages of the median?

Answer 31

Can be unrepresentative in a small sample | Not as sensitive as the mean because not all the scores are used in the calculation

Question 32

What are advantages of the mean?

Answer 32

Most accurate | Most representative because it uses all the data

Question 33

What are disadvantages of the mean?

Answer 33

Not useful if the scores are skewed e.g. if there are some really large and some really small numbers May not be one of the actual scores

Question 34

What are advantages of the mode?

Answer 34

Less prone to distortion by 'freak scores' | Sometimes makes more sense than the mean e.g. you can't have 2.1 people

Question 35

What are disadvantages of the mode?

Answer 35

Sometimes you can have more than one mode | Does not use all the scores

Question 36

What are the two measures of dispersion?

Answer 36

Range and standard deviation

Question 37

How do you calculate the range?

Answer 37

Subtract the smallest value from the largest value in a set of data

Question 38

What are the advantages of the range?

Answer 38

Takes into full account the extreme values (uses all the data) Easy and quick to work out

Question 39

What are the disadvantages of the range?

Answer 39

Affected by 'freak' extreme values | Does not show whether data are clustered or spread evenly about the mean

Question 40

What are advantages of standard deviation?

Answer 40

Measures dispersion | Allows for interpretation of individual scores

Question 41

What are disadvantages of standard deviation?

Answer 41

Harder to calculate | Less meaningful if data are not evenly distributed

Question 42

What can percentage data be plotted on?

Answer 42

A pie chart

Question 43

What is correlation data plotted on?

Answer 43

A scattergraph, which indicates direction of correlation

Question 44

When to use a bar chart and when to use a histogram?

Answer 44

Histograms are generally used for continuous data | Bar charts can be used for nominal data

Question 45

What kind of data does a histogram use?

Answer 45

Continuous

Question 46

Advantage of frequency polygon?

Answer 46

2 or more frequency distributions can be compared on the same graph

Question 47

What is a normal distribution?

Answer 47

Data with an even distribution of scores either side of the mean

Question 48

What is skewed distribution?

Answer 48

Data that does not have an even distribution of scores either side of the mean