Add on Course on Research

Methodology
Day-1
 Topics to be covered
Types of measurement scale

SPSS Interface:

Data Editor, Data Entry and Importing Files to SPSS,

Data Cleaning

Missing Value Treatment and descriptive statements

cross tabulations.
 Measurement Scales
Measurement: the process of applying numbers to objects according to a set of rules

4 Scales of measurement:

Nominal

Ordinal

Interval

Ratio
 Nominal Scale

Different numbers indicate different objects

No real meaning other than differentiating between objects

Example: Gender-

1= male

2= female
 Ordinal Scale

Assign numbers to objects (like nominal), but here the numbers also have
meaningful order.

Place finished in a race: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on

Number indicates placement or order: 1st is better than second and so on

 Interval Scale

Numbers have orders (like ordinal), but there are equal intervals between
adjacent categories

Example: temperature in degrees

 Ratio Scale

Differences are meaningful (like interval), plus ratios are meaningful and
there is a true zero point (absence of property)

Example: weight
 Measurement Scales

Nominal: Which one? What kind?

Ordinal: what order? When?

Interval: how many? How much?

Ratio: absolute quantity. No zero.

 SPSS Interface

Data Entry

New Data file

Data View and Variable View

Importing files to SPSS

 Data Cleaning

The process of preparing data for analysis by removing or modifying data that
is incorrect, missing, irrelevant, duplicated or improperly formatted.

Such data may hinder the data analysis process or provide inaccurate results
 Steps of Data Cleaning in SPSS

Missing Value Analysis

Out of range values

Detecting & removing outliers

Univariate: Zscore (> 3.29)

Multivariate: Mahalanobis Distance Pobability (<0.001)

Concept of normal distribution, inferential statistics and parametric, t-test, one
way ANOVA, Chi-square.
 Descriptive statements

Describes the data

The distribution concerns the frequency of each value.

The central tendency concerns the averages of the values.

The variability concerns how spread out the values are.

 Inferential Statistics
inferential statistics allows you to make predictions (“inferences”) from that data. 

to understand the larger population from which the sample is taken.

Two main areas of inferential statistics:

Estimating parameters. This means taking a statistic from your sample data and
using it to say something about a population parameter

Hypothesis tests. to draw conclusions about populations, Testing the hypothesis

using the sample data to answer research questions.
 Hypothesis Testing

Parametric and Non Parametric Tests

Three forms of statistical tests:

Comparison Tests

Correlation Tests

Regression Tests
Comparison Tests
Correlation Tests
Regression Tests
 T-test
Tests how significant the differences between 2 groups are in terms of means

Using t- score

Larger the t-score, more differences there are between groups and vice versa

3 types of t-test

Independent Sample t-test (compare means of 2 groups)

Paired Sample t-test (compares means from same group at different times)

One-sample t-test (mean of single group against a known mean)

 One-way ANOVA
 to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences between the means
of three or more independent (unrelated) groups.

Null Hypothesis

alternative hypothesis- Ha: there are at least two group means that are statistically
significantly different from each other. 

It cannot tell you which specific groups were statistically significantly different from each
other, only that at least two groups were.

To determine which specific groups differed from each other, you need to use a post hoc
test. Post hoc tests are described later in this guide.

Analyse > compare means > one way ANOVA

 Assumptions

Normal distribution

Homogeneity of Variances

Independent observations
 Chi Square Test

A chi-square statistic is one way to show a relationship between

two categorical variables. 

how much difference exists between your observed counts and the counts you
would expect if there were no relationship at all in the population.

Analyze>Descriptive Statistics>CrossTabs>Statistics
 Correlation

“the tool with the help of which the relationships between two or
more than two variables is studied is called correlation”

Coefficient of Correlation: Denoted by ‘r’

A measure of co-variation and it does NOT prove causation.

Karl Pearson’s Coefficient of Correlation
Most Widely used

Denoted by ‘r’

Deviations from actual mean:

or where,
r=

r = +1; Perfect Positive Correlation

r= -1; Perfect Negative Correlation

r= 0; No Correlation
 Types of Correlation

Positive & Negative

Linear & Non-linear

Simple, Partial & Multiple

Graphical Presentation of Positive
Correlation
Graphical Presentation of Negative
Correlation
Correlation in SPSS
 Testing Assumptions
Ratio or Interval Data

Normal Distribution of Data

No Outliers

Linear Relationship Between Variables

Homoscedasticity
SPSS- Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient

Analyze>Correlate>Bivariate

The linear correlation coefficient takes a value between –1 and +1

(both values inclusive).
If the value of the correlation coefficient is equal to 1, the two
variables are perfectly positively correlated
Similarly, if the correlation coefficient between the two variables
X and Y is –1, and there exists perfectly negative correlation.