PSYC2012 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Categorical Variable, Frequency Distribution, Standard Deviation

• School: University of Sydney
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC2012
• Professor: Dr Rebecca Pinkus/Dr Steson Lo/Dr Haryana Dhillon

Document Summary

Data sets range in size (small or large) Statistics allow us to organise the data to make them easier to comprehend: describe. Allow is to summarise the data in sensible ways (average/proportions: analyse. Variables: what is varying within the study, conceptual vs. operation distinction. Theory vs. practice: categorical (group/uni) vs. continuous (atar) Independent variable: what you manipulate, assigning people to conditions/treatment, or selecting different people (people with different characteristics) Dependent variable: what you measure, the behaviour, aka outcome variable. Independent and dependent variable: whether a given variable is an iv or dv is not intrinsic to the variable, depends on the research question. Nominal scale: each category has its own unique identity, categorical data. Ordinal scale: the levels of the scale can be ordered according to whether they are higher or lower or the same, level of the scale can be ordered.