Psychology - Research Methods - Types of Data

Question 1

Nominal (discrete) data

Answer 1

Data are in separate categories. A person can only be placed in one category and not another

Question 2

What’s an example of nominal data?

Answer 2

Grouping people according to favourite television show or eye colour

Question 3

ordinal data (continuous)

Answer 3

Data ordered or placed in a rank

Question 4

What’s an example of ordinal data?

Answer 4

Make a list of music genres in order of liking or who scored the highest to lowest in IQ test

Question 5

Interval data (continuous)

Answer 5

Data measured in units of equal intervals

Question 6

What is an example of interval data

Answer 6

Miles or centimetre. Or how stressed are you on a scale of 1-10

Question 7

Quantitative data

Answer 7

Data that is measured in numbers of quantities, includes closed questions or tallies

Question 8

What are the advantages of quantitative data?

Answer 8

• Easier to analyse that qualitative so comparisons, trends and patterns are easily drawn - Data is more objective and less open to bias than qualitative data

Question 9

What are the disadvantages of quantitative data?

Answer 9

• Lacks validity and means we might not be measuring the key variables identified in the aim - Lacks meaning and consists of numbers or yes and no answers so doesn’t give context

Question 10

Qualitative data

Answer 10

Descriptive data that cannot be counted or quantified, it includes open questions in questionnaires and describing what was seen in an observation

Question 11

What are the advantages of qualitative data?

Answer 11

Can gain lots of detailed data, High in validity and measures concepts and ideas stated in the aim

Question 12

What are the disadvantages of qualitative data?

Answer 12

Data is unreliable so if it was to be repeated it would be unlikely that the same results would be gained. May be subjective when you analyse the detail and it may be difficult to generalise and make conclusions

Question 13

Primary data

Answer 13

Information observed or collected directly from first-hand experience.

Question 14

secondary data

Answer 14

information that already exists somewhere, having been collected for another purpose

Question 15

meta-analysis

Answer 15

a procedure for statistically combining the results of many different research studies

Question 16

publication bias

Answer 16

the tendency for journals to publish positive findings but not negative or ambiguous ones