SA 255 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Operationalization, Frequency Distribution, Descriptive Statistics

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SA 255
• Professor: Nicholas Scott

Document Summary

Descriptive statistics = describing data by turning raw, hard-to-read data into percentages and other statistics that tell a much more concise story. Operationalization = turn concepts into measurable variables (eg. age into years of age , or age into 10 year intervals ; eg. inequality income difference or income bifurcation ) Variables = traits that can change values from case to case. Eg. sex, social class, ethnicity immigration status. Frequency tables = summarize distribution of a variable, continuous or discrete, by reporting the number of times each score of a variable occurred. Exhaustive = there must be enough categories so that all observations fall into some category. Mutually exclusive = the categories must be distinct so that an observation will fall into only one category. Good quantitative questions investigate distributions of attitudes and behaviours across populations of interest. Quantitative sampling = allows generalizations to these populations; require random samples. Constructing a proper frequency table and interpret it.