教育心理统计研究课件Lecture5.pptVIP

Lecture 5 Summarizing data Frequency distributions The idea of a frequency distribution is to tell us the number of cases in each category. By ‘frequency’ is simply meant the number of times that something occurs. Very often we also need to compute percentages, which tell us the proportion of cases contained within each frequency. Using SPSS to produce frequency tables and histograms In order to generate a frequency table for income, we will need to group the data; otherwise we will get a frequency count and percentage for every single income in the sample. We would have separate bars for each income within the sample. To group the data, we will need to use the Recode procedure. In doing this, we will be creating a new variable which will be called incomegp. The aim is to group people into different income groups: 5,000 and below; $6,000-6,999; $7,000-7,999; $8,000-8,999; $9,000 and above. The following sequence will accomplish this: Using SPSS to produce frequency tables and histograms Transform Recode Into different variables Variable name Change Old and new values Range… OK Using SPSS to produce frequency tables and histograms The following sequence will generate the frequency table output: Analyze Descriptive statistics Frequencies Using SPSS to produce frequency tables and histograms For a histogram of income, the following sequence should be followed: Frequencies Charts Histograms OK An alternative way of presenting data relating to a nominal variable is a pie chart, which displays the number of cases in each category in terms of slices of a circle. Frequencies Charts Pie charts OK Measuring central tendency One of the most important ways of summarizing a distribution of values for a variable is to establish its central tendency—the typical value in a distribution. Three measures of average are usually discussed: the arith