Data Handling and Analysis Flashcards
What is qualitative data?
Data in the form of words which is rich and detailed. Often produced from case studies, unstructured interviews and observations.
What is quantitive data?
Data in numerical form, often produced from lab experiments or closed questions.
Evaluation of quantitative and qualitative data
Qualitative data is detailed and properly reflects human experiences and behaviours, so is higher in internal validity than quantitative.
However, quantitative data is much easier to analyse and draw conclusions from, and is less open to bias and subjective opinion than qualitative data.
What is primary data?
Data that has been collected by the researcher for the purposes of the study (e.g., conducting interviews, running a lab experiment).
What is secondary data?
Data collected by someone other than the researcher (data that already exists), for example census information.
One example of this is a meta-analysis, which is where a researcher looks at the results of a number of studies on a particular topic in order to establish general trends and conclusions. Information wasn’t collected for the purpose of that study.
Evaluation of primary and secondary data
Primary data perfectly fits the study, as it has been designed for this specific purpose, and the researcher has control over it. Although, this requires more time and effort for the researcher.
Secondary data is potentially less time-consuming and expensive, but the quality of it cannot be controlled by the researcher and it may not perfectly match the needs/aims of the study.
What are the measures of central tendency and what do they do?
Mean, median, mode and these measure the average in a typical data set.
What is the mean and give some strengths?
Calculated by adding up all of the scores, then dividing by the number of scores there are. Takes into account all of the data, so is the most ‘sensitive’ measure, but, is affected by extreme values.
What is the median and give some strengths?
The scores are put in numerical order, and the middle score is taken as the median. If there are two middle scores, they are added together and divided by 2 to give the median.
The median is much less affected by extreme scores than the mean, and is easy to calculate, but, is less sensitive as not all scores are taken into account.
What is the mode and give some strengths?
The mode is the most commonly occurring score in a set of data. If there are two modes, the data set is bi-modal. If all the scores are different then there is no mode.
Easy to work out, but it is not very sensitive, and there may be several modes in a data set.
What are measures of dispersion?
The range and standard deviation. These measure how far the scores in a data set are spread out.
How to do the range and give some strengths?
The difference between the lowest and highest score in a data set. Usually, 1 is added to the difference, to allow for the fact that scores are often rounded up or down in research.
Easy to calculate, but only takes the highest and lowest score into account, so can be affected by ‘outliers’ (extreme values).
How to do standard deviation and give some strengths?
Measures the spread of scores around the mean, in other words the average distance of each of the scores from the mean. The higher the standard deviation, the more spread out the scores are, suggesting a large variation in the results. The lower the standard deviation, the more similar all the participant’s scores were.
A more precise measure of dispersion than the range, but, as the mean is being used, it can be affected by extreme values, as the mean has been distorted.
What are some ways to present Quantitative Data?
Tables, Bar Charts, Histograms, Line Graphs, Scattergrams.
What is a normal distribution of results?
Variables should form a bell shaped curve.
