quanti data analysis and data distributions

Question 1

quantitative data

Answer 1

results that can be counted, usually given as numbers

Question 2

qualitative data

Answer 2

results that are expressed in words and are non-numerical.
- description of the thoughts, feelings, opinions of participants or what the researcher saw in an observation

Question 3

what is nominal data

Answer 3

categories

Question 4

what is ordinal data

Answer 4

a non-standardised, numerical scale where there are not fixed intervals between each unit

Question 5

what is interval data

Answer 5

standardised scale with equal, precisely defined scales at fixed intervals

Question 6

what are descriptive statistics

Answer 6

a way of using numbers to describe the data that you have in different ways

Question 7

what are the types of descriptive statistics

Answer 7

• measures of central tendency
• measures of dispersion
• graphs

Question 8

what are measures of central tendency

Answer 8

• tell us about the central values for a set of data
• mean (interval)
• median (interval and ordinal)
• mode (all)

Question 9

what are measures of dispersion

Answer 9

• tell us about how spread out the data items are
• range (ordinal)
• standard deviation- a measure of the average distance between each data item above and below the mean (interval)

Question 10

mean strengths/weaknesses

Answer 10

strengths
- most sensitive measure of central tendency as it takes into account the exact distance between all of the values of the data so it is representative of the data as a whole
weaknesses
- sensitivity can be distorted by 1+ extreme values and thus end up being misrepresentative of the data as a whole

Question 11

median strengths/weaknesses

Answer 11

strength
- not affected by extreme scores so can be useful under such circumstances
- appropriate for ordinal data and is easier to calculate than the mean
weakness
- not as sensitive because the exact values are not reflected in the middle value

Question 12

mode strengths/weaknesses

Answer 12

strengths
- easiest to calculate
weaknesses
- can end up being very different from the median and mean and so not really representative of the data as a whole
- only measure of central tendency that can be used for nominal data

Question 13

range strengths/weaknesses

Answer 13

strengths
- easy to calculate
weaknesses
- affected by extreme values because it only takes 2 values into account so it may be misrepresentative of the data as a whole

Question 14

standard deviation strengths/weaknesses

Answer 14

strengths
- precise measure of dispersion as it takes all exact values into account so is representative of the data as a whole
weaknesses
- may be distorted by a single extreme value as all of the data are taken into account so may be unrepresentative of the data as a whole

Question 15

normal distributions

Answer 15

• bell-shaped curve
• distribution is symmetrical around the midpoint

Question 16

positively skewed distributions

Answer 16

• most of the scores are bunched towards the left

Question 17

negatively skewed distributions

Answer 17

most of the scores are bunched towards the right