Research skills Flashcards
Two types of categoric data? What is the difference between the two?
Ordinal and nominal. Ordinal Scale involves arranging information in a specific order, i.e. in comparison to one another and “rank” each parameter.
What descriptive statistics are used to describe data?
Measures of central tendency and Measures of dispersion.
Quantative data analysis approach?
Clean data. State research question and hypotheses. Summarise data by calculating descriptive statistics and presenting data with graphs or tables. Test hypotheses.
What does the Standard deviation describe?
Quantifies spread of parametric data.
How is standard error of the mean calculated?
SD divided by square root of sample size.
Single peak distribution?
Normal distribution.
Downwards staircase distribution?
Positively skewed.
Upwards staircase distribution?
Negatively skewed.
Two peak distribution?
Bimodal distribution.
Perfectly horizontal distribution?
Uniform distribution.
What is used to visualise data to see if it is normally distributed?
Histogram.
What can be used to test for normality in small sample sizes? n<50
Shapiro-Wilks test
What can be used to test for normality in large sample sizes? n>50
Kolmogorov-Smirnov
If data is normally distributed what descriptive statistics are used?
Plot mean ± SD or SEM (can also use 95% CI of the mean).
If data is not normally distributed what descriptive statistics are used?
Plot median ± Interquartile Range
