POLS 3650 Study Guide - Final Guide: Frequency Distribution, Central Limit Theorem, Standard Deviation

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 3650
• Professor: Edward Koning

Document Summary

Data preparation and operationalization: 4 levels of measurement: Identifying variables and possible values (or attributes: nominal categorization only, ordinal categorization and ranking, we often feel comfortable treating ordinal variables as interval/ratio variables if the number of values is high (at least higher than 5) Interval categorization and ranking and equal distance: ratio categorization and ranking and equal distance and natural zero point. Interval and ratio variables can be further subdivided in discrete variables (that only have a limited number of possible values) and continuous variables (that can theoretically always be expressed more precisely) Hypothesis formulation: h1 (alternative or research hypothesis) the hypothesis you want to investigate, h0 (null hypothesis) the logical opposite of h1. In bivariate and multivariate analysis, this is typically there is no relationship: statistical significant tests investigate the likelihood of your findings if h0 were true. Data analysis univariate: visualization, table of frequency distribution.