Data Handling and Analysis

Question 1

What is quantitative data?

Answer 1

numerical data

Question 2

What is qualitative data?

Answer 2

non-numerical data (words)

Question 3

What are the strengths of quantitative data?

Answer 3

easy to analyse and test for a correlation or difference between two sets of data

P’s are usually happier to provide quantitative data as its quick and easy

Question 4

What are the weaknesses of quantitative data?

Answer 4

criticised for lacking detail (e.g. we don’t know why P’s may have rated their mood as a 4/10)

Question 5

What are the strengths of qualitative data?

Answer 5

rich in detail (e.g. we know why a person had rated their mood a 4/10)

Question 6

What are the weaknesses of qualititative data?

Answer 6

more difficult to analyse, more time consuming for researcher (e.g. content or thematic analysis)

P’s are usually more reluctant to provide qualitative data as it is time consuming

Question 7

What is primary data?

Answer 7

data collected by the researcher themselves for the purposes of the particular study

Question 8

What is secondary data?

Answer 8

data collected by somebody else for the purposes of their own investigation; you use their data

Question 9

What are the strengths of primary data?

Answer 9

suitable for the purpose of the study ‘tailor mode’

accurate; researcher knows data has come from a well-conducted experiment because they conducted it

Question 10

What are the weaknesses of primary data?

Answer 10

time consuming

expensive to conduct experiment and collect data

Question 11

What are the strengths of secondary data?

Answer 11

quick and easy

not as expensive as data already exists

Question 12

What are the weaknesses of secondary data?

Answer 12

wasn’t collected for your specific study, so isn’t really suitable

research cannot be sure the data has come from a well-conducted source as they have not conducted it

Question 13

What is a meta-analysis?

Answer 13

involves collecting data from a variety of sources and then analyzing the huge pool of data

e.g. Van Ijzendoorn did a meta-analysis on cultural variations in attachment types

Question 14

What are the strengths of a meta-analysis?

Answer 14

because the wide stat range and more P’s, it has a high population validity and the sample is likely to be representative.

conducting a meta-analysis means that the research is much bigger than it would be if only primary data was used

Question 15

What are the weaknesses of a meta-analysis?

Answer 15

wasn’t collected for your specific research, may not be suitable

researcher cannot be sure the data has come from a well conducted research, could be unreliable

conducting this on a huge amount of data is time consuming and complicated

Question 16

What are the 3 types of measures of central tendency?

Answer 16

mean
mode
median

Question 17

What are the 2 types of measures of dispersion?

Answer 17

range

standard deviation

Question 18

What is mean?

Answer 18

the average

Question 19

What is mode?

Answer 19

the most often

Question 20

What is median?

Answer 20

middle number from a line up of smallest to largest

Question 21

What are strengths of the mean?

Answer 21

all scores achieved by P’s are involved in calculation; very accurate measure

Question 22

What are weaknesses of the mean?

Answer 22

very sensitive so is distorted by extreme values

rarely an actual score in set of data

Question 23

What are strengths of the mode?

Answer 23

quick and easy to calculate

it is less prone to distortion by extreme values

Question 24

What are weaknesses of the mode?

Answer 24

very crude measure of central tendency

there can be more than one mode in a set of data

Question 25

What are strengths of the median?

Answer 25

not distorted by extreme values

easier to calculate than the mean

Question 26

What are weaknesses of the median?

Answer 26

less sensitive than the mean as not all values in set of data are included in calculation

can be unrepresentative in a small set of data especially when scores are clustered

Question 27

What is the range?

Answer 27

largest number subtracted from the smallest

Question 28

What is standard deviation?

Answer 28

measures how much a set of scores is dispersed around an average measure of variability

Question 29

What are the strengths of the range?

Answer 29

easy to calculate

Question 30

What are the weaknesses of the range?

Answer 30

distorted and sensitive to extreme values

doesn’t use all data within a set

Question 31

What are the strengths of standard deviation?

Answer 31

shows how much data is clustered around a mean value

very accurate

not affected by extreme values

Question 32

What are the weaknesses of standard deviation?

Answer 32

full range of data is not shown

hard to calculate

assumes normal distribution pattern

only uses data where I.V. is plotted against frequency

Question 33

What are the percentages of a skewed distribution?

Answer 33

0 - +1 = 34.13%
+1 - +2 = 13.59%
+2 - +3 = 2.14%
+3 - +4 = 0.13%