L12 - Types Of Data

Question 1

3 types of data

Answer 1

• Nominal (discrete) data
• ordinal (continuous) data
• interval (continuous) data

Question 2

Nominal (discrete data)

Answer 2

• data is in separate categories e.g. eye colour
• person can only be placed in one category and not another

Question 3

Ordinal (continuous data)

Answer 3

• data is ordered in some way
  e.g. asking people to make a list of music genres in order of liking
• or data could be ordered and placed in rank order e.g IQ test results

Question 4

Interval (continuous data)

Answer 4

• data is measured using units of equal intervals e.g cm/miles
• many psychological studies use their own interval scales (e.g rate stress on scale of 1-10)
• but intervals are arbitrarily determined so can’t know for sure there are equal intervals between the numbers

Question 5

Quantitative Data

Answer 5

• represents how much, long or many etc.. there are of something
• measured in numbers of quantities
• easy to analyse
• can oversimplify

Question 6

Quantitative Data includes

Answer 6

• closed questions in questionnaires
• tally of how many times a behavioural category is seen

Question 7

Quantitative Data Advantages

Answer 7

• easier to analyse then qualitative data - easier to draw comparisons/trends/patterns
• more objective and less open to bias

Question 8

Quantitative Data Disadvantages

Answer 8

• lacks validity - may not measure key variables identified in the aim
• lacks meaning - just has yes/no answers and numbers - doesn’t tell us the ‘why’ in terms of what causes behaviour

Question 9

Qualitative Data

Answer 9

• can’t be counted/quantified
• in form of information which is lengthy & in detail
• normally collected on the basis on how people think or feel
  e.g how do you feel about not having home study

Question 10

Qualitative Data Includes

Answer 10

• interviews/observations
• books, pictures, diaries, reports, newspapers etc…
• open questions in questionnaires
• researches describing what they see in an observational study

Question 11

Qualitative Data Advantages

Answer 11

• detailed data - can help appreciate complexity of human behaviour
• high in validity and usually measures concepts/ideas in the aim (if IV really affects DV)

Question 12

Qualitative Data Disadvantages

Answer 12

• usually unreliable data, if repeated in future, unlikely to get same results
• may be subjective when analysing
• may be difficult to generalise and make conclusions

Question 13

Primary Data

Answer 13

• information observed/collected directly from first-hand experience
• data collected by researcher for current study
• provides exact type of data researcher looks for
• takes time/effort to collect

Question 14

Secondary Data

Answer 14

• collected for another purpose
• could be collected by another researcher or use gov statistics
• when desired research already exists, no need to conduct more research - can use pre collected data
• substantial variation in quality and accuracy of secondary data
• hard to know how reliable it is

Question 15

Meta-analysis

Answer 15

• process of combining results from a number of studies on a topic to provide an overall view - collect & collate a wide range of previous studies
• allows us to review data with more confidence
• can generalise results across larger populations
• could also be prone to publication bias - researcher may leave out studies with negative/non-significant results