AQA Psychology - Research Methods - Data Analysis: Descriptive Statistics
Central tendency refers to measures that identify the center or average of a data set. It includes calculating the mean, median, or mode to summarize the overall pattern in the data.
What is central tendency?
Calculating the mean, median or mode
Key Terms
What is central tendency?
Calculating the mean, median or mode
What is the mean?
Arithmetic average
Strength of the mean:
Sensitive, includes all the data giving an overall impression
Limitation of the mean:
Unrepresentative = very large or small can distort figure more easily than median or mode
What is the median?
Middle value
How do you calculate the mean?
Add up all the scores and divide by the number of scores
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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
What is central tendency? | Calculating the mean, median or mode |
What is the mean? | Arithmetic average |
Strength of the mean: | Sensitive, includes all the data giving an overall impression |
Limitation of the mean: | Unrepresentative = very large or small can distort figure more easily than median or mode |
What is the median? | Middle value |
How do you calculate the mean? | Add up all the scores and divide by the number of scores |
How do you calculate the median? | Place scores in ascending order and select middle value. (Two value in the middle, take the mean of these is calculated) |
Strength of the median: | Unaffected by extreme scores = more representative |
Limitation of the median: | Less sensitive, exclude extreme values which may be important |
What is the mode? | Most frequent value, used with categorical or nominal data |
How do you calculate the mean? | Count the most frequent values |
Strengths of the mean: | Relevant to categorical data = discrete data |
Limitations of the mean: | Overly simple measure = not useful at describing data |
What is the measures of dispersion? | Range and standard deviation |
What is a range? | The difference between highest and lowest value |
Strength of range: | Easy to calculate = easier than standard deviation |
Limitation of range: | Does not account for the distribution of scores |
What is standard deviation? | Measure of the average spread wound the mean |
The larger the standard deviation… | the more spread out the data |
Strength of standard deviation: | More precise than range = more accurate overall distribution of data set |
Limitation of standard deviation: | Misleading = may ‘hide’ characteristics (extreme values may not be shown) |