Research methods - Descriptive Statistics

Question 1

Descriptive Statistics

Answer 1

• describes the patterns found in a set of data
• central tendency: to describe an average
• measures of dispersion describe how spread out the data is

Question 2

Mean: advantages

Answer 2

• uses all scores in a data set
• used in further calculations

Question 3

Mean: disadvantages

Answer 3

• can be skewed by extremely high or low scores
• can be unrepresentative and therefore misleading
• can sometimes give an unrealistically precise value

Question 4

Mode: advantages

Answer 4

• shows the most common or ‘important’ score
• shows a result from the actual data set, so it can be a more useful or realistic statistic

Question 5

Mode: disadvantages

Answer 5

• not very useful if there are several modal values, or if the modal value is only slightly more common than other scores
• it has little further use in data analysis

Question 6

Median: advantages

Answer 6

• relatively quick and easy to calculate
• not affected by extremely high or low scores, so it can be used on ‘skewed’ sets of data to give a ‘representative’ average score

Question 7

Median: disadvantages

Answer 7

• not all the scores are used to work out the median
• has little further use in data analysis

Question 8

Range: advantages

Answer 8

• quick and easy to calculate

Question 9

Range: disadvantages

Answer 9

• ignores the central values of a data set, so it can be misleading if there are very high or low scores

Question 10

Standard Deviation: advantages

Answer 10

• all scores in the set are taken into account, so it’s more accurate than the range
• it can also be used in further analysis

Question 11

Standard Deviation: disadvantages

Answer 11

• not as quick or easy to calculate as the range