Week 5 Flashcards
Are raw measurement scales always meaningful?
Not necessarily. The raw score may not be important, but the relative position may be. Eg. You finished your race in 43 minutes vs you finished in 3rd place.
What are two good elements of standardised scales?
- They are easy to determine how extreme/unusual a score is
2. easy to compare data from different scales
What are two common standard scores?
- Z scores: M=0, SD= 1
2. T scores: M=50, SD=10
What do Z-scores use as a ‘ruler’?
Standard deviation. Measured scores are re-expressed as standard deviation scores.
What are two examples of scores being converted to Z-scores?
\+1.0= 1 SD > M -2.5= 2.5 SDs < M
Does transforming data to Z scores change the distributional shape?
No, it does not.
When data is normally distributed, what does this mean for percentages of Z-scores?
~68% of scores within +/-1.0 SD of mean
~95% of scores within +/- 2.0 SD of mean
~99% of scores within +/- 3.0 SD of mean
How do you convert raw scores to Z-scores?
Subtract the mean from the individual score
Divide by the standard deviation
How do you transfer Z-scores to raw scores?
Multiply z-score by standard deviation
Add mean of raw scores
Do Z-scores allow comparison rates between count based performance and time based performance?
Yes.
Does the size of the sample systematically affect the standard deviation?
No.
For a normally distributed sample, M +- SD contains what percentage of observed scores?
~68%.
What does the mean (M) + or - standard error (SE) describe?
a sampling distribution
- theoretical distribution
- expected distribution of statistics if sampling was repeated many times.
What does standard error describe?
The variability of statistics
With standard error, what does one sample provide?
One statistic (mean, average).. If many samples were collected from the same population their statistics would vary.
Is standard error systematically affected by sample size?
Yes it is. It has an inverse relationship; bigger samples have smaller standard errors.
What does the confidence interval length indicate?
It indicates the precision of the estimate.
What are confidence intervals calculated from?
They are calculated from the standard error, which is also affected by sample size.
What is the three point summary that APA publication manual stated about confidence interval?
- CIs can be an extremely effective way of reporting results
- CIs combine info about location and precision and can often be directly used to infer significance levels
- CIs are, in general, the BEST reporting strategy
What range does the CI specify?
The range in which we can have a specified level of confidence that the true population lies