PSYC 1010 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Confounding, Operational Definition
21 Oct 2013
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Document Summary
Statistics the practice of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and reporting numerical data. Two branches: descriptive statistics: organize, summarize, and communicate numerical, inferential statistics: use data from sample and generalize about info. population. Population the set of all observations of interest in a particular study. Sample- a set of observations drawn from a population of interest for inclusion in a study. Variables observation of physical, attitudinal, and behavioral characteristics that can take on different values. Discrete observation- can take on only specific values, ex. Continuous variables - can take on a full range of values (e. g. #"s to several decimals) an infinite # of potential values exists. Two kinds: nominal variables used for observations that have categories, or names as their values, ordinal variables observations that have rankings as their values (1st, Sometimes interval and ratio variables are referred to as scale variables. Scale variables a variable that meets the criteria for an interval or ratio variable.
