Research methods- Measures of central tendency

Question 1

What are the 3 measures of central tendency?

Answer 1

1) Mean
2) Median
3) Mode

Question 2

What is the mode?

Answer 2

Most frequently occurring value

Question 3

What are 3 advantages of the mode?

Answer 3

1) represents a figure that does actually occur in a set of data
2) Useful when other measures of central tendency are meaningless
3) Unaffected by one or two extreme scores

Question 4

What are 3 disadvantages of the mode?

Answer 4

1) Doesn’t tell us anything about the other values in the set of data
2) Not always a single value for the mode- may be 2 or several (less useful)
3) Small changes in the data can radically alter the mode

Question 5

What is the median?

Answer 5

Middle value when scores are arranged in ascending/descending order (2 middles? add and divide by 2)

Question 6

What are 2 advantages of the median?

Answer 6

1) Remains relatively unaffected by any outlying (extreme) values
2) Can be used on data with skewed distributions

Question 7

What are 3 disadvantages of the median?

Answer 7

1) Doesn’t work well on small sets of data
2) Ignores most of the scores & so is less sensitive than the mean
3) Affected by any alteration of the central values in a set of values