Jargon & Basic Concepts

Howell
Statistical Methods for Psychology
Questions
• Define and illustrate:
– Population, Sample
– Parameter, Statistic
– Descriptive, inferential statistics
– Random selection (sampling), assignment
– Internal, External validity
– Discrete, continuous variables
– Scale types (nominal, ordinal, interval,
ratio)
Population vs. Sample
• Population – collection of all the objects
of interest to researcher (you).
– College students, students at USF
• Sample – subset of objects from the
population
– Want a representative sample
– Samples are relatively practical
– Random samples have good properties
– One person’s sample is another’s population
Parameter vs. Statistic
• Parameter – numerical summary of
population
– E.g., mean, standard deviation
• Statistic – numerical summary of
sample
– E.g., mean, standard deviation
• Typically we compute statistics and
estimate parameters using statistics.
Descriptive vs. Inferential
• Descriptive statistics describe a sample
– How tall are these students?
• Inferential statistics use sample
statistics to make decisions about
populations.
– Is one method of instruction better than
another?
Random Select & Assign
• Random selection is a process of picking a sample
from a population so that each element has the same
probability of being sampled.
– E.g., lottery, every 3rd name from a list (this is
actually a systematic sample but it’s good)
• Random assignment is assignment to treatment so that
each element has an equal probability of being
assigned to each treatment.
– E.g., lottery, every other name, etc.
• Both are typically accomplished by lists (aka frames)
and computer generated numbers (e.g., SAS PROC
PLAN)
Internal, External Validity
• Internal validity - quality of inferences
about the study itself. Random
assignment, history, maturation, etc.
• External validity – quality of inferences
from the study to the larger domain of
interest. Representative sample of
participants, task relevance, behavioral
consequents, etc. Aka generalizability of
the results (but not generalizability study).
Variable & Distribution
• Variable vs. constant
– Attribute either varies across objects or not
• Distribution: Collection of data
• Distribution: Array of scores
– Height
– Beck Depression Index
– Rat bar press
– Wonderlic
Discrete vs. Continuous
• Math
– Integer vs. real numbers
• Data
– Categorical vs. continuous (many valued,
ordered)
• Examples
Political party, job satisfaction, response
time, country of origin
Scale types
• Nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio
• Nominal – categories. No ordering; mean
has no connection to attributes
• Ordinal – rank order only
• Interval – rank order plus equal interval.
ratio of differences has meaning
• Ratio – rank order, equal intervals,
rational zero point. Ratio of numbers has
meaning.
 Scale Types: Footrace review
Nominal Ordinal Interval Ratio
ID number Rank order Time of Elapsed
of finish day of time from
finish start
043 1 10:57 a.m. 4 min
011 2 10.59 a.m. 6 min
136 3 11:01 a.m. 8 min
112 4 11:02 a.m. 9 min
086 5 11:04 a.m. 11 min
Review
Find a partner to work on this exercise.

Suppose you want to know whether one brand of tennis

shoe is better than another. You have about $10K from
a grant to study this. Describe a study you might conduct
to find out. What might be your population, sample,
independent and dependent variables? What statistics
might you want to compute? Never mind the actual
statistical test at this point. What data would you
gather? What might a critic say about the internal and
external validity of your study? What scale types are
your IV and DV?