Becoming Acquainted with Statistical Concepts:

I. Three Basic Statistical Concepts

a. Describe data

b. Find the degree of relationship between two or more variables

c. Find differences between two or more groups

 II. Statistics is simply an objective means of interpreting a collection of observations?

Example:

If you were a PE teacher and you measured the Height and the standing-long-jump
performance for each student in your 7th grade class you could:

Sum all the heights and then divide by the number of students to get the average (mean)
Height.

a. M = SX/N; where S means sum, X = each student’s height, and N = number of

students

b. You could also test the relationships between the two variables height and standing-
long-jump

c. You might hypothesize that the taller students will jump the farthest?

d. By plotting the scores of each student one can see that there tends to be a relationship
and taller people tend to jump farther.

e. It is not a perfect relationship, however.

III. Pearson product moment coefficient of correlation, r

a. When two variables are unrelated their r is approximately zero?

b. If the relationship is moderate, then r = .40 to.60

c. If all the points were on a straight line, then r = 1.0

IV. The t test

a. To find the differences between groups

b. Suppose you believe that weight training will improve jumping scores?
 c. You divide the class into two groups and have one group train with weights for
8 weeks to develop leg strength.

d. You want to know whether the independent variable (weight training) produces
a change in the dependent variable (standing-long-jump)

e. The t test is used to determine whether there is a significant difference between

two groups.

V. Computers used in Statistical Analysis

a. SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

b. BIMED: Biomedical Series

c. SAS: Statistical Analysis System

d. Spreadsheet

VI. Description and Inference

a. Are not statistical techniques

b. One cannot necessarily infer a cause and effect relationship.

c. Any statistic describes a sample of participants

d. If the sample was chosen from a larger group, or population then the findings
can be inferred (generalized) to the larger group

e. The method of selecting the sample, procedures, and context is what does or
does not allow inference

V. Selecting the Sample

a. Random selection? example: 10,000 students selected at random using table

of random numbers? Select 200 students

b. Stratified Random sampling? the population is divided (stratified) on some

characteristic before random selection? example: Freshman = 30% (60), sophomores
= 30% (60), juniors = 20% (40), seniors = 20% (40)

a. Systematic Sampling? example: telephone book

b. Random Assignment? once the sample has been selected groups must be
determined by randomly assigning participants from the sample to the groups.
 c. Post Hoc Justification

i. If the sample was not randomly selected from a larger population

inferences should not be made to the larger population

ii. If the sample is representative of the larger population in terms of some

characteristic, i.e., average age, racial balance, socioeconomic status, etc.,
some justification can be made, but weakly.

VI. Difficulty of Random Sampling

a. In many studies, random sampling is not possible, or done at all.

b. Getting volunteers is the main goal.

c. Random sampling can apply to treatments

d. What we really need is a sample good enough for our purpose

e. If we do not disregard the strict restrictions of random sampling, we would

seldom generalize beyond the sample.

f. The best possible generalization statement is to say that the findings may be
plausible? in other participants, treatments, and situations, depending on their
similarity to the study characteristics.

VII. Measures of Central Tendency

a. When we have a group of scores, one number may be used to represent the group

b. Mean = SX/N; where M is the mean, X represents the scores, N is the number of
scores

c. Median = the middle score when ranked

d. Mode = the most frequent score.

e. These terms express central tendency.

VIII. Variability

a. Within the group? of scores, each individual score differs to some degree from the
central tendency score.

b. Standard Deviation and Variance are measures of this degree of variability.