PSYCH-UA 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Percentile, Ogive, Measuring Instrument

• School: New York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH-UA 10
• Professor: Elizabeth A Bauer

Document Summary

Infinite it can get finer and finer. The only thing that stops the measurement is our measuring instrument. Discrete: number of children, pages in a book: finite number of values and gaps between adjacent values, there is a sure difference between 41 students and 43 students. The number of (cid:272)hildre(cid:374) i(cid:374) a fa(cid:373)il(cid:455) is a dis(cid:272)rete (cid:374)u(cid:373)(cid:271)er (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause there (cid:272)a(cid:374)(cid:374)ot (cid:271)e a (cid:862)half-(cid:272)hild(cid:863) **we are talking about variables, not measurement. Temperature can be measured in different ways, (cid:271)ut it"s a (cid:272)o(cid:374)ti(cid:374)uous. Also, (cid:373)easuri(cid:374)g a(cid:374)(cid:454)iet(cid:455) is (cid:272)o(cid:374)ti(cid:374)uous (cid:271)e(cid:272)ause there"s a spe(cid:272)tru(cid:373) Independent variable: what we are observing or manipulating. Dependent variable: the variable that we are using to access/evaluate whether our manipulation worked. Example: reaction time between boys and girls as a function of gender. Independent variable: gender: (cid:862)bo(cid:455)(cid:863) a(cid:374)d (cid:862)girl(cid:863) are (cid:448)alues of the variable the variable is the overall categorization, scale of measurement: nominal, gender is a category, dependent variable: reaction time, scale of measurement: has absolute zero value.