Descriptive Statistics and Measures of Central Tendency

Descriptive statistics is the appropriate analyses when the goal of the research is to present the participants’ responses to survey items to address the research questions. Descriptive statistics can be useful for providing basic information about variables in a dataset and highlighting potential relationships between variables. Measure of Central Tendency is a single value that attempts to describe a set of data by identifying the ______ within that set of data.

When to use the Mean, Median, Mode. MODE is suitable for ______ and ordinal variables.

MEDIAN is suitable for ______, interval, and ratio variables.

MEAN is suitable for ______ and ratio variables.

If the research question takes the form of statistical ‘what’ questions, then it requires a descriptive statistical test. If the research question is a statistical ‘yes-no’ question, then it involves the use of an ______ statistical test.

If the variable is categorical, use ______ and PERCENT. If it is continuous, you may either use MEAN and STANDARD DEVIATION (if there are no extreme scores) or MEDIAN and QUARTILE DEVIATION (if there are extreme scores).