Research Methods - Descriptive Statistics

Question 1

What is descriptive statistics

Answer 1

Methods of summarising and analysing numerical data in order to draw meaningful conclusions

Question 2

What are ‘Measures of Central Tendency’?

Answer 2

Averages indicating most typical values in a set of data

Question 3

Methods of calculating central tendency

Answer 3

Mean, median, mode

Question 4

Advantages/Disadvantages of using the mean

Answer 4

Advantages: More representative of data as a whole bc it includes all the values

Disadvantages: easily distorted by extreme values which means it won’t represent the overall data

Question 5

Mean

Answer 5

arithmetic avg. calculated by adding all values in a set of data and dividing by the no. of recorded values

Question 6

Median

Answer 6

central value in a data set when values are arranged from lowest to highest

Question 7

Advantages/Disadvantages for median

Answer 7

Advantages: not affected by extreme scores

Disadvantages: less sensitive than the mean as higher/lower/extreme values are ignored and may be important

Question 8

Mode

Answer 8

most frequently occurring number in a data set (bi-modal if two)

Question 9

Advantages/Disadvantages of mode

Answer 9

Advantages: easy to calculate

Disadvantages : crude measure of the data