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    Er. Rajendra Acharaya
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    STATISTICS FOR RESEARCH with a Guide to SPSS

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    Pages from Chapter 9

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    73 views8 pages

    STATISTICS FOR RESEARCH With A Guide To SPSS

    Uploaded by

    Er. Rajendra Acharaya
    Pages from Chapter 9

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 8
    PART3 Descriptive statistics: Numerical measures 9 Measures of central tendency Pan 2 locked at se description of data in grsphicel a tabular farm. Tables and graphs as 2 form of describing deta give some sense of toe overall distribution of cases. For example, a ick glaace aa equeney Ble ora histogram will ieotty te value that scems to be the ‘eener" ofthe distnibetor. However, we somtimes want to capture this feature of the daa i ste prec terms what des the “Spica” or “average” case Took like? ‘Measures af ceateal tendency Measures of central tendency (aise knowe as measures of loestlon) are univariate descriptive stasis, ‘These are three common measures of central tendency: mode, median, and mean. Each measure embodies 8 different notion of average and, a Table 9.1 indicaes, choosing which to «atalate oa a given set of data is restricted by the evel at which a variable s measured “able 9.4 Measure of cone Yoten09 Nace Cane we wh si ics of cana aa ST wi aes Hat vey ARE Mesa Cooked hake daar! sad vase) St ofr sae ee vale ean _Cogbe sd forests ut oad In this uble we ean see oe ofthe basic rules of statistics: Jeclaigues that cam be applied fo 2 particular level of measurement can olso be applied to 0 higher level. For example, tke measure of central tendency that can be calculated for nominal data (faode) cat also be caleulated for ordins! and iterva/aio data. Ths ebould be borae in mind as you read the rest Of the book; wher. I refer to towioal-level saiseal techniques I really mean “eomioal oF above’, and ordinal data teckniques really refers ta “ordgal or above’. The eoavecss, however, is ne: Cue: measures thar cor Be calculated for @ pariculor level of measurement carne! always be calculated for lower eves, The teas, fer example, c40 only be ealeased for the highest level of measurement (aterva/ati). ‘To see how each of these measures 0° central tendency is ca/culated we will se an exact, ‘of 20 eases from me hypothetical studeot survey we ioduced in Chapter 2. The distributions {or ts sub-set of 20 students are presented in Tables 92, 9.3, and 94 Table 9.2 Senet repeadents = Teme a ia 2 edt 95 alto aig of espns 14 Stoistics for Researeh Table 94 Age of rmpandents ee 2 3 oy The mode ‘We will stat with the made (i). which isthe simptest measute of central tendeney, ad hich can Be calculated for ll evel of measurement Measures of centro tendency bas ‘The mediag ‘With ordinal and interval/ratio dats we can alo calculate the median (8) score, slong with the mode. We cannot calculate the mediaa for nominal data since the determination ofthe ‘median requires thatthe eases be rank-ordered from lowes! to highest i terms of the quaality ‘ofthe variable each case possesses, I all the Cases in a dsteibution are ranked fom lowest to bighes, the medion isthe walve thar divides the dora iy half, Hal of all the cases havea value {or the variable greater than the rmedian ane belt of all cases bave a velue ess than the ‘median. In other words, iT randomly select «case from a vak-ordeed saris, there is exactly 450 pereert chance shot it will fll above the median tnd a 50 perceat chaace a wil fall below the median, ‘The mode isthe only measur of central tendency thas can be calculated for nominal data, ad its great advantage aver other choices is that it is very easy to ealculate. A simple Inspection ofa frequency table is enough to deters the modal value or category For example, the category for sex that has the highest frequency in Table 9.2 is male, with 12 respooses. For health raing in Table 9.3 the mode is “very healthy, and for age ia Table 914 che mode is 18 years Although it ts exceptionally easy to determtine the mode, aecesionally people make the Iistake of specifying as the mode the highest /requeney, rater than the score withthe highest frequency. That is, [2 might be reported as the mode for Table 9.2 since this is the highest frequency. This acme - ths importa pot (© remember i that the mde she sore hat oveurs most Gequentl, not tbe numberof tiniest appears inthe distribution, ‘The mode fis 00¢ feature that docs not apply tothe median oF mean as measures of cea tendency: there cap be tore than one mode for the same distribution, For example, assume We have the distribution forage shown in Table 95, Table 95 Ape ofrespondens Aven ra —— We cao see that two categories have the highest frequency: 18 years and 22 years This is

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