S W 318 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Dependent And Independent Variables, Statistical Inference, Null Hypothesis
Document Summary
Can be used to describe the group (sample of population) that is being studied. To make predictions or inferences about a population from observations and analyses of a sample. Descriptive statistics apply only to the cases being studied while inferential statistics are used to generalize to a larger group from which the sample was drawn. Test of significance tell us the probability that the results of the analysis of the sample could have occurred by chance. If alpha equals . 05 there is a 5% chance the relationship found in the sample occurred but chance (sampling error) and is not representative. The distributions are positively skewed: the research hypothesis is always a one-tailed test. Values are always positive: minimum is zero with no maximum. As the number of degrees of freedom increases, the chi-square distribution becomes more symmetrical. Does not offer much information about the strength of the relationship or its substantive significance in the population.
