PSYC 303: MEASUREMENT

AND EVALUATION IN
PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 2.2: STATISTICS REFRESHER (cont’d)
MEYMUNE N. TOPÇU, PhD
 Recap from Lecture 2
Graphs
Describing Data

Measures of Central
Tendency
Levels of Measurement

Discrete vs. Measures of

Continuous scale Variability
Challenging Concepts from Pre-Quiz 2
  Describing data
 Frequency distributions; Measures of central
tendency; Measures of variability
 Skewness-Kurtosis
 The normal curve
Lecture Plan  Standard scores
 z scores & T scores
 Correlation & Inference
 Pearson and Spearman Correlation
 Graphic representation
 Meta-Analysis
 Skewness
 The nature and extent to which symmetry is absent in a distribution
 Positive skewness: Relatively few of the scores fall at the high end of the distribution. E.g. The test was too
difficult
 Negative skewness: Relatively few of the scores fall at the low end of the distribution. E.g. The test was too
easy
 Kurtosis
 The steepness of a distribution in its center, i.e., the peakedness/flatness of the curves
 Platycurtic: Relatively flat; Leptokurtic: Relatively peaked; Mesokurtic: Somewhere in the middle
 High kurtosis values: A high peak and “fatter tails” compared to normal distribution
 Low kurtosis values: A distribution with a rounded peak and thinner tails
The Normal
Curve
 Bell-shaped, smooth, mathematically defined curve that is
highest at its center
 The curve is perfectly symmetrical, with no skewness
 Therefore, the mean, median, and the mode all have the
same exact value
 The normal curve can be divided into areas defined in units of standard deviation
 Hypothetical distribution of national spelling scores, with a mean of 50 and SD of 15
 A normal curve has two tails
 The example of intelligence tests to identify mentally retarded or gifted individuals
  Remember raw score
 Standard scores: a raw score that has been converted
from one scale to another scale that has some arbitrarily
set mean and standard deviation
 Why?
Standard Scores  Standard scores are more easily interpretable than raw
scores
 The position of the test taker's performance relative to
others is readily apparent

 Different systems for standard scores exist

  z score: The score that indicates how many standard
deviation units the raw score is below or above the mean
of the distribution
Standard Scores
 What is the z score of the raw score of 65?
 What does this tell us?
 Now calculate the z scores of the raw scores 98 and 42. Compare their z scores
Standard Scores

 You learned that Sezin’s raw score on the reading

test was 24 and that her raw score on the
arithmetic test was 42. On which test did Sezin
perform better?
 After computing her z scores based on the other
students’ scores in her class, you find out that her
z score for the reading test was 1.32 and her z
score for the arithmetic test is -0.75.
 Now how do you interpret her relative
performance in both tests?
  T score: Uses a scale of 50 plus or minus 10
 Ranges 5 standard deviations below and above the mean
 The mean is always 50, SD is 10
 The advantage: no negative scores
Standard Scores  T Score: 10 (z-score) + 50
 If a person got a T-score of 75 on a mathematical test what
does that tell us?
 How about a person who got a T-score of 45?
 IQ score is also a kind of standard score
 The distribution typically has a mean set at 100 and SD at 15
 How about non-normal distributions?
 Linear transformation: Retains a numerical relationship to the original score
 Non-linear transformation: Does not have a direct numerical relationship to the original raw score. It is
done when the data is non-normal and will be compared with a normal distribution
 Normalizing a distribution: “Stretching” the skewed curve into a normal curve
 Fine-tuning the test is preferable than transformation
In Class Demonstration
 Which statistical test do we need to
understand the degree of relationship
between two scores?
  Central to psychological testing and assessment are
inferences (deduced conclusions) about how some things
(such as traits, abilities, or interests) are related to other
things (such as behavior)
 E.g., Sleep & Memory performance, Depression levels &
Relationship skills, Video games & Anger levels etc.
Correlation  Correlation coefficient provides us with an index of the
strength of the relationship between two things
 Two variables are said to be correlated when variations
in the value of one variable are synchronized with
variations in the value of the other
 “People who
smoke generally • As the value of cigarette
die younger than consumption increases, the
people who value of longevity decreases
don’t”

• A young person who starts

Correlations smoking today will probably
allow us to not live as long as one who
make doesn’t
predictions • But not every smoking person
die early
  The sign of the correlation coefficient
 Positive correlation
 Age and height for a child, Study time and test
performance

Correlation
  The sign of the correlation coefficient
 Positive correlation
 Age and height for a child, Study time and test
performance

 Negative correlation
 Cigarette consumption and longevity, Exercise and
Correlation depression symptoms, Time spent on phone during class
and grade
  The magnitude of the correlation, spans -1 to 1
 +1  Perfect positive correlation
 “For every 30-minute increase in sleep – 2 more words
remembered”
 -1  Perfect negative correlation
 “For every 1 package of cigarette increase in daily
consumption – 5 years decrease in life longevity”
Correlation  0  No correlation
 Perfect correlations are very rare
 The absolute correlation correlation usually lies between 0 to 1. But where?
 How many exceptions there are to the rule
 Few exceptions – closer to 1 than 0
 Many exceptions – closer to 0 than 1
 Correlation is not causation!
 E.g., “There is a high positive correlation
between hat size and spelling ability”
“Does hat size cause spelling ability?”
 Correlation does not imply causation but
there is an implication of prediction
 If we know that there is a high
correlation between X and Y, then we
should be able to predict—with various
degrees of accuracy—the value of one of
these variables if we know the value of
the other
  The Pearson r
 When the relationship between variables are linear and
when the variables are continuous
 Is the r significant given the sample size?
Correlation  Coefficient of determination: r2 x 100
 The percentage of the variance accounted for
 If r is .6 the coefficient of determination is 36%
 The remaining variance could presumable accounted for
by chance, error, or unexplainable factors
  Spearman’s rho (rank-order correlation)
 Used when the sample size is small and when both sets of
measurements are in ordinal form

Correlation
 Curvilinearity
 Outlier: an extremely atypical point located at a relatively long distance—an outlying distance—from the rest
of the coordinate points in a scatterplot
 Outliers can be the result of a small sample size
 Restricted and unrestricted range
 The first graph shows the relationship for all 600 applicants
 The second graph shows the relationship for only the top 300 students who were admitted
  What is meta-analysis?
 Combining the information across various studies that
explore the same subject
 “Combined, what do all of these studies tell us about the
matter under study?”

 The effect size is typically expressed as a correlation

coefficient
Meta-Analysis  “The typical therapy client is better off than 75% of
untreated individuals” (Smith & Glass, 1977, p. 752)
 “There is “about 10% increased risk for antisocial behavior
among children with incarcerated parents, compared to
peers” (Murray et al., 2012)

 Meta-analyses can be replicated; They are reliable;

promotes evidence-based pratice
Exercise for the concepts we learned so far
 Psychological testing vs. assessment
 Tools of assessment
 Characteristics of tests
 Levels of measurement
 Measures of central tendency& variability
 Skewness – Kurtosis
 The normal curve
 Standard scores
 Correlation
  Descriptive statistics
 z-score
 Graph for distribution
In-class Activity  Graph for correlations
 Correlation
 Compare the two sections