What are STATISTICS?

What are STATISTICS?

Numerical facts and figures
Involves math and relies upon
calculations of numbers
Relies heavily on how the
numbers are chosen and how
the statistics are interpreted
Identify the major flaw…
 A new advertisement for Ben and
Jerry's ice cream introduced in late
May of last year resulted in a 30%
increase in ice cream sales for the
following three months. Thus, the
advertisement was effective.

 The more churches in a city, the

more crime there is. Thus, churches
lead to crime.
“Statistics” refers to a
range of techniques and
procedures for analyzing,
interpreting,
displaying, and making
decisions based on data.
 3 Functions of
Statistics
❶ Descriptive – provide ways of summarizing the
information that we collect from a multitude of sources

❷ Inferential – confidence in which we can

generalize from a sample to the entire population

❸ Data Simplification/Data exploration/Data

reduction – to make sense of large amounts of data
that otherwise would be too much confusing
 Why do we study
statistics???!!
Research Idea  STATISTICS  Usable Conclusion

 To organize massive amount of information

into a more objective interpretable form
 To properly evaluate the data and claims
that bombard you everyday
 To communicate results and research
conclusions
 To learn to recognize statistical evidence
that supports a stated conclusion
 The study of statistics can help you make
reasonable guesses
TYPES OF DATA AND HOW
TO COLLECT THEM
VA R I A B L E
Simply a characteristic or
feature of the thing we are
interested in understanding

Any concept that we can

measure and that varies
between individuals or cases
TYPES OF
VA R I A B L E S
NOMINAL VS. SCORE
NOMINAL SCORE
• decide which • assign a
category of a numerical value
variable a to a
particular case measurement;
belongs; the numbers
qualitative quantify the
measure; variable; can be
described in ordered or
words ranked
 DEPENDENT VS.
INDEPENDENT
INDEPENDEN DEPENDENT
T • effect in
• variable is variable
manipulated caused by
by an the
experimente manipulation
r; cause on IV
 QUALITATIVE VS.
QUANTITATIVE
QUALITATIVE QUANTITATIVE
• express a • variables
qualitative measured in
attribute; values
terms of
of qualitative v
do not imply a
numbers
numerical • Discrete and
ordering continuous
 DISCRETE VS.
CONTINUOUS
DISCRETE CONTINUOU
• possible S
scores are • scale is
discrete continuous;
points on the infinite
scale;
countable
For each of the following, determine if
the variable is continuous or discrete:
1. Time taken to read a book chapter
2. Favorite food
3. Cognitive ability
4. Temperature
5. Letter grade received in a class
OBSERVABLE VS. LATENT
VARIABLES
OBSERVABLE LATENT
• can be • not directly
directly observed but
measured or are inferred
observed. from
observable
variables
 LEVELS OF
MEASUREMENT
NOMINAL ORDINAL INTERVAL RATIO

• Name or • Allow • Intervals have • Most

the same
categori compariso interpretation informativ
ze ns of the throughout/eq e scale
degree to ual in size • An interval
response • No true zero
which two scale + its
s subjects
point
zero
• Do not possess position
imply the DV indicates
any • Place the the
ordering scores in absence of
among order from the
the the quantity
response smallest being
to largest measured
s
 LEVELS OF
MEASUREMENT

Scale
Ordinal
Nomin
al
For each of the following, determine the
level of measurement:

1. T-shirt size
2. Time taken to run 100 meter race
3. First, second, and third place in 100
meter race
4. Birthplace
5. Temperature in Celsius
Sige, isipin mo…
What level of measurement is used in
psychological variables?
 CONSEQUENCES OF
LEVEL OF MEASUREMENT
The relationship between the
variable’s level of measurement
and the statistics that can be
meaningfully computed with that
variable

Nominal scale, even when it is

coded/labeled with numbers, should
not have its MEAN be taken
because it will not make sense
 The take away…
O Always ask yourself what sort of measurement
it is you are considering—is it numerical score
on a variable or is it putting individuals into
categories?
O Never assume that a number is necessarily a
numerical score. Without checking, it could be a
frequency of observations in a named category.
O Clarity of thinking is a virtue in statistics—you
will rarely be expected to demonstrate great
creativity in your statistical work.
Understanding precisely the meaning of terms
is an advantage to statistics.
 COLLECTING DATA
O Population: collection of all people who have
some characteristic in common; general (all
people) v. specific group (all freshmen
psychology majors at NDU)
O Sample: a small subset of a larger set of data /
population
O Crucial that the sample is representative of
the population; not over-represent one kind
at the expense of others
O Sampling bias: our conclusions apply only
to our sample and are not generalizable to
the full population
 SIMPLE RANDOM
SAMPLING
 Every member of the population have an equal
chance of being selected into the sample
 Choose a sample by pure chance
 Sample size matters!
 Random samples are not necessarily representative of the
entire population, esp. if it is small
 A large sample size makes it likely that our sample is close
to representative of the population
 For this reason, inferential statistics take into account the
sample size when generalizing results from samples to
populations
 STRATIFIED
SAMPLING
O Stratified random sampling
O First, identify members of your
sample who belong to each group.
O Then, randomly sample from each of
those subgroups in such a way that
the sizes of the subgroups in the
sample are proportional to their sizes
in the population.
 CONVENIENCE
SAMPLING
O It’s okay to have imperfect sampling
methods, esp. if we do research on
unstudied area
O Easy of use
O Okay to use if we intend to follow up
with a representative sample
O Unfortunately, it is used due to its
convenience, without the intent of
improving on it in future work
TYPES OF RESEARCH
DESIGN
(TRUE) EXPERIMENTAL
DESIGN
O The use of random assignment to
treatment conditions and
manipulation of the independent
variable
O Random sampling: randomly
chosen as samples VS. Random
Assignment: sample is randomly
assigned to a certain condition
(TRUE) EXPERIMENTAL
DESIGN
O Research Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of
the new CBT program in reducing anxiety symptoms.
O Participants: 40 individuals diagnosed with
generalized anxiety disorder.
O Random Assignment: Participants are randomly
assigned to either the new CBT program (Group A) or
the standard supportive therapy (Group B).
O Measurement: Anxiety symptoms are measured
using a standardized anxiety inventory after 8 weeks
of therapy.
O Comparison: The psychologist compares the anxiety
levels between Group A (new CBT) and Group B
(standard supportive therapy) to determine the
effectiveness of the new CBT program.
QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL
DESIGN
O Manipulating the IV but not
randomly assigning people to
groups
O Why use this?
O It may be unethical to deny potential
treatment to someone if there is good
reason to believe it will be effective and
that the person would unduly suffer if
they did not receive it
O It may be impossible to randomly
assign people to groups
NON-EXPERIMENTAL
DESIGN
O Correlational research
O Observing things as they occur
naturally and recording our
observations as data
O Reflects reality as it actually exists
since we as researchers do not
change anything
O Becomes a predictor
TYPES OF STATISTICAL
ANALYSES
 DESCRIPTIVE
ANALYSIS
O Numbers that are used to summarize and describe data
O Just descriptive; they do not involve generalizing beyond the
data at hand
O It is important to differentiate what we use to describe
populations vs. samples
O Population is described by a parameter: the true value of
the descriptive in the population, but one that we can never
know for sure
O so instead, we estimate the population parameter by using a
sample statistic: refers to the specific number we compute
from the data (e.g. average); an estimate of the true
population parameter, and if our sample is representative of
the population, then the statistic is considered to be a good
estimator of the parameter.
O Sampling Error: discrepancy/difference between the
parameter and the statistic we use to estimate it.
 INFERENTIAL
STATISTICS
O shows how our data behave
O how we generalize from our sample
back up to our population
O Correlational, comparative, and
predictive