General Psychology

Appendix A
Statistics: Understanding Data
Linda S. Krajewski, MA

Another Look at Statistics

Statistics

is a branch of mathematics
used by researchers to organize,
summarize, and interpret data
Chapter 1 discussed a few types of
statistics we will revisit those and add a
few others in this section

Descriptive Statistics
Descriptive

statistics organize and

summarize the research data

Counts, percentages, ranges, means,

standard deviations, etc.

Frequency Distributions
A

frequency distribution is a summary of

how often various scores occur in a
sample of scores

Score values are arranged from lowest to

highest and the number of times each score

occurs is recorded
Frequency distributions are often shown in
graphs called histograms or frequency
polygons

Frequency Distribution
Histogram

Frequency Polygons

Measures of Central Tendency

Mean the average of a set of scores; usually

the most representative measure of central
tendency

If there are some extremely high or extremely low

scores in the set, it may be more appropriate to look at
the mode or the median

Mode the score that occurs most frequently

in a set of scores
Median the score that falls in the middle of a
distribution of a set of scores
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Measures of Variability
Range

the highest score in a

distribution minus the lowest score
Standard deviation calculation that
helps determine how far a score is from
the mean while considering the whole
distribution

Z-scores and the Normal Curve

Z-scores

express the number of

standard deviation units a score is from
the mean
A standard normal distribution
(sometimes referred to as a bell curve)
occurs when the mean, median, and
mode are all the same and fall in the
exact middle
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Standard Normal Distribution

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Correlations

A correlation is a measure of how strongly two

variables are related to one another also
called correlation coefficient
Positive correlation as A increases, B
increases
Negative correlation as A increases, B
decreases
A perfect positive correlation is +1

A perfect negative correlation is -1

Correlations DO NOT imply causation!

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Positive Correlation

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Negative Correlation

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Zero Correlation
(No Correlation)

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Inferential Statistics

Inferential statistics allow references to infer

how statistically meaningful a studys results
are
T-tests are used to establish whether the
means of two groups are statistically different
from one another
If more than two groups are being compared,
an analysis of variance (ANOVA) is used

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Inferential Statistics
Significance

tests are used to determine

how likely a result would have occurred
by chance

This is most often seen as a notation with the

letter p
The minimum p value that is normally
acceptable in psychology is p < .05

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Inferential Statistics
The

effect size is a more sophisticated

look at statistical significance that breaks
apart the effects of individual variables
Meaningful results that make it possible
for researchers to feel confident that their
hypotheses was either supported or
refuted represent a significant outcome

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Inferential Statistics
Type

I error erroneously concluding

that study results are significant
Type II error failing to find a significant
effect when one truly exists
Population a complete set of
something
Sample a subset of a population
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Inferential Statistics

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