Midterm – Psychological Statistics

Lesson 2: Introduction to Statistical Methods Used in the Field of Psychology

History of Statistics
Statistics – ultimately derived from the New Latin statisticum, meaning “council of state” and the Italian
word statista, which means “statesman or politician”
 The General Statistik was first introduced by Gottfried Achenwall (1749), originally designated
the analysis of data about the state, signifying the “science of state.”
 The meaning of statistics as collection and classification of data was introduced into English in
1791 by Sir John Sinclair when he published the first of 21 volumes titled Statistical Account of
Scotland.
 The first book to gave “statistics” in its title was “Contributions to Vital Statistics” (1845) by
Francis GP Neison.
Electronic Computers – expedited more elaborate statistical computation even as they have facilitated
the collection and aggregation of data.
- produce simple, accurate summaries, and allow more tedious analyses.
Mathematical Statistics – designates the mathematical theories of probability and statistical inference,
which are used in statistical practice.
Applied Statistics – can be regarded as not a field of mathematics, but an autonomous mathematical
science and operations research.

Statistics is defined as:

 shortened version of statistical procedures
 a set of mathematical procedures
 consists of facts and figures
 branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of
masses of numerical data.
 the practice or science of collecting and analyzing data in large quantities, especially for the
purpose of inferring proportions in a whole from those in a representative sample.
2 General Purposes of Statistics According to Gravetter and Wallnau in 2013
1. Statistics are used to organize and summarize information so that the researcher can see what
happened in the research study and can communicate results to others.
2. Statistics help the researcher to answer the questions that initiated the research by determining
exactly what general conclusions are justified based on the specific results that were obtained.
Statistical Procedures – help to ensure that the information or observations are presented and
interpreted in an accurate and informative way.
Statistics – provide researchers with a set of standardized techniques that are recognized and
understood throughout the scientific community.

Populations and Samples

 Research in the behavioral sciences such as in psychology typically begins with a broad question
about a specific group (or groups) of individuals.

Population – the entire group that you wish to study.

 - is the set of all the individuals of interest in a particular study
Examples of population:
 entire set of women on the planet earth
 study of women who are registered voters in the Philippines
 study of population consisting of women who works in congress as representatives.
Sample – Researchers typically select a smaller, more manageable group from the population and limit
their studies to the individuals selected from population.
- A sample is intended to be representative of its population, and a sample should always be
identified in terms of the population from which it was selected.
The Relationship of Population and Sample
The Population – all of the individuals of interest
- the sample is selected from the population
The Sample – the individuals selected to participate in the research study
- the results from the sample are generalized to the population.
Variable – something that can change or have different values.
- can be characteristics that vary from one individual to another or environmental conditions that
change
- is a condition or characteristics that can have different values, and it can vary
Example of a variable:
 a researcher may be interested in the influence of the weather on people’s moods
Raw Score (Score or Datum) – the measurement obtained of the variables being examined for each
individual.
Data Set (Data) – the complete set of scores
Value – is just a number. It can also be a category or a psychiatric diagnosis.
Psychology Research – is about variables, values, and scores. The formal definitions are a bit abstract,
but in practice, the meaning is usually clear.

Parameters and Statistics

 a characteristic that describes a population – for example, the average score for the population
– is called a parameter.
 A characteristic that describes a sample is called a statistic. Thus, the average score for a sample
is an example of a statistic.
 The research process begins with a question about a population parameter. However, the actual
data come from a sample and are used to compute sample statistics.
The Two Branches of Statistical Methods
1. Descriptive Statistics – used to summarize and describe a group of numbers from a research
study
- Descriptive statistics are techniques that take raw scores and organize or summarize them in a
form that is more manageable.
2. Inferential Statistics – used to draw conclusions and to make inferences that are based on the
numbers from a research study, but go beyond the numbers.
 The natural differences that exist, by chance, and a population parameter are called
sampling error. It is also very unlikely that the statistics obtained for a sample are identical
to the parameters for the entire population.
  This is the basic concept of sampling error: sample statistics vary from one sample to
another and typically are different from the corresponding population parameters.

Data Structures, Research Methods, and Statistics

I. Measuring Two Variables for Each Individual: The Correlational Method
 One method for examining the relationship between variables is to observe the two
variables as they exist naturally for a set of individuals.
 Consistent patterns in the data are often easier to see if the scores are presented in
a graph, which is called a scatter plot.
 A research study that simply measures two different variables for each individual is
an example of correlational method, or the correlational research strategy.
II. Comparing Two (or More) Groups of Scores: Experimental and Non-experimental Methods
 The second method for examining the relationship between two variables involves
the comparison of two or more groups of scores.
 The goal of an experimental method is to demonstrate a cause-and-effect
relationship between two variables. Specifically, an experiment attempts to show
that changing value of one variable causes change to occur in the second variable;
one variable is manipulated while another is observed and measured.
2 Characteristics that Differentiate Experiments from Other Types of Research Studies:
1. Manipulation – the researcher manipulates one variable by changing its value from one level to
another. A second variable is observed (measured) to determine whether the manipulation
causes changes to occur.
2. Control – the researcher must exercise control over the research situation to ensure that other,
extraneous variables do not influence the relationship being examined.
2 General Categories of Variables that Researchers Must Consider:
1. Participant Variables – the characteristics of the participants such as age, gender, and IQ that
vary from one individual to another.
2. Environmental Variables – the characteristics of the environment such as lighting, time of day,
weather conditions, etc.
3 Basic Techniques to Control Other Variables
1. Random Assignment – each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each of the
treatment conditions.
2. Matching – to ensure equivalent groups or equivalent environments.
3. Holding Them Constant – holding the variable constant.
Terminology in the Experimental Method
1. Independent Variable – is the variable that is manipulated by the researcher. In behavioral
research, the independent variable usually consists of the antecedent conditions that were
manipulated prior to observing the variable.
2. Dependent Variable – is the variable that is observed to assess the effect of the treatment.

Control Conditions in an Experiment

The goal is to demonstrate that the treatment has an effect by showing that the scores in the treatment
condition are substantially different from the scores in the no-treatment condition. In this kind of
research, the no-treatment condition is called the control condition, and the treatment condition is
called the experimental condition.

Nonexperimental Methods: Nonequivalent Groups and Pre-Post Studies

Pre-post study involves comparing scores that are obtained by measuring the same variable twice for
each participant – before and after treatment.
 The researcher has also no control over other variables that change with time. Because of these
reasons, this study is also not considered a true experiment.
 The “independent variable” in a non-experimental study is often called a quasi-independent
variable.
Data Structures and Statistical Methods
1. One Group with Two Variables Measured for each Individual.
 The relationship between the two variables is usually measured and described using a
statistic called a correlation.
 The relationship between variables for non-numerical data is usually evaluated using a
statistical technique known as a chi-square test.
2. Comparing Two or More Groups of Scores.
 When the measurement procedure produces numerical scores, the statistical evaluation
typically involves computing the average score for each group and then comparing the
averages.

Variables and Measurement

 Constructs are internal attributes or characteristics that cannot be directly observed, but are
useful for describing and explaining behavior. Examples of hypothetical constructs: intelligence,
anxiety, hunger
 Operation definition identifies a measurement procedure (a set of operations) for measuring an
external behavior and uses the resulting measurements as a definition and a measurement of a
hypothetical construct.
An operational definition has two components:
1. It describes a set of operations for measuring a construct.
2. It defines the construct in terms of the resulting measurements.
Examples:
intelligence is measured and defined by performance on an IQ test.
hunger can be measured and defined by the number of hours since last eating,
 Discrete Variables – consist of separate, indivisible categories. For this type of variable, there are
no intermediate values between two adjacent categories. Discrete variables are commonly
restricted to whole, countable numbers. A discrete variable may also consist of observations
that differ qualitatively.
Examples:
the number of children in a family
the number of students attending class
 Continuous Variables – there are an infinite number of possible values that fall between any two
observed values. A continuous variable is divisible into an infinite number of fractional parts.
Examples:
time
height
weight

Two Other Factors Apply to Continuous Variables:

1. When measuring a continuous variable, it should be very rare to obtain identical measurements
for two different individuals.
2. When measuring a continuous variable, each measurement category is actually an interval that
must be defined by boundaries.
Real limits – are the boundaries of intervals for scores that are represented on a continuous number
line. The real limit separating two adjacent scores is located exactly halfway between the scores. Each
score has two real limits.
Upper real limit – the top of the interval
Lower real limit – the bottom of the interval
Scales of Measurement
Measurement involves assigning individuals or events to categories. The categories used to measure a
variable make up a scale of measurement, and the relationships between the categories determine
different types of scales.
The 4 Scales of Measurement
1. Nominal Scale
2. Ordinal Scale
3. Interval Scale
4. Ratio Scale
The Nominal Scale
 the word nominal means “having to do with names.”
 consists of a set of categories that have different names.
 measurements on this scale label and categorize observations, but do not make any quantitative
distinctions between observations.
 examples: classifying people by race, gender, or occupation, or college degree major, number in
a jersey shirt.
 categories on this scale are not quantitative values even though they are occasionally
represented as numbers.
 the numerical values are simply names and do not represent any quantitative difference.
The Ordinal Scale
 consists of a set of categories that are organized in an ordered sequence.
 measurements on an ordinal scale rank observations in terms of size or magnitude.
 example: first, second, third ranks, and so on in a horse race.
 verbal labels such as small, medium, and large.
 with measurements from an ordinal scale, you can determine whether two individuals are
different and you can determine the direction of difference.
 however, ordinal measurements do not allow you to determine the size of the difference
between two individuals.
The Interval and Ratio Scales
 Both an interval and ratio scale consist of a series of ordered categories with the additional
requirement that the categories form a series of intervals that are exactly the same size.