Quantitative Data Analysis with SPSS: Chapters 4 & 5

Measurement is the assignation of numbers to the units of analysis, which can be nominal,
ordinal or in a interval or ratio.

When you have a lot of data, it becomes difficult to process, so you need to make
summaries in order to find patterns and tendencies. This can be achieved through
presenting frequency distribution.

There are different ways to present frequency distribution:

● Bar charts: It is important to not have too many categories for these, as that can
produce distortion.
● Histogram
● Pie charts: They are useful for comparing variables’ relative size. An slide explosion
is useful for emphasizing a particular variable.

Frequency distribution can be normal, positively skewed or negatively skewed. In order to

find out where values concentrate, we can measure the central tendency. Different
measures of average can be used:
● Arithmetic mean: This is the actual average, and can be affected by extreme values.
● Median: This is the middle value in the distribution when arranged in ascending order
(when the number is even, you need to add the two middle values and divide them
between two.)
● Mode: This is the least used method. It just measures the most recurring value, whih
can be more than one value.

Dispersion measures how widely spread the distribution is. The range is the difference
between the highest and lowest value. Range is susceptible to distortion in the case of
extreme values. A solution for dealing with extreme values is to calculate the difference
between the first and third quartile. Standard deviation, on the other hand, summarizes the
dispersion in a single value.