Although the mean is used most often as a measure of central tendency, when might someone prefer mode over mean or median? When is the median preferred over the mean to describe a varia
rovide answers to the questions below.
- Although the mean is used most often as a measure of central tendency, when might someone prefer mode over mean or median? When is the median preferred over the mean to describe a variable?
(Note: Be sure to specify when to use mean vs. median vs. mode based on the type of measure (categorical vs. interval, type of distribution). - What are some ways in which measures of central tendency can inadvertently lead to bad decisions? Refer to the example Canvassing for Donations to show how this can occur. What are some circumstances that are particularly likely to be problematic?
(Hint: the shape of the distribution is important)?
discuss Purpose of the discussion: When you conduct your dissertation, you will compile a large amount of information. This info will need to be assembled, processed, simplified, clarified, and shared in order to bring out its true value—in a word, reduced (often referred to as data reduction).Your data analysis will use statistical procedures (tools) to reduce the amount of detail in the data and summarize it, and make the most important facts and relationships apparent.Before you can analyze data you must prepare it and organize the data so it can be processed. While one could hand tabulate findings, it is far more efficient to use statistical software to display results and calculate appropriate statistical analysis. This is where SPSS comes in! Even though software helps greatly to simplify the processes of computing calculations and tabulations, you will be the one to analyze and interpret the findings.This discussion is focused on getting you up and running in SPSS. First, make sure you have installed SPSS and are able to open it.Tasks:Poll 5 other people and ask the following questions. Write down the answers as you will need to enter these in SPSS after you have the data file set up:
- RESPOND. What are the last four digits of your phone number?
- EXER1. Do you exercise regularly? (Yes or No)
- EXER2. How many hours a week would you say you exercise?
- EXER3. Do you participate in team sports? (Yes or No)
- EXER4. What is your favorite sport to play?
The first step in creating your data set is to create the variables. Click on the "Variable View" tab at the bottom. Use the Steps to Create a Data File in SPSS Steps to Create a Data File in SPSS – Alternative Formats to create your data file for this discussion.
Preparing a Data File in SPSS Simply follow the steps below to create your first SPSS data file:
1. Open SPSS. 2. A dialog box will open, press cancel since we are creating a new file.
Setting Up Your Data File – Variable View 1. The first step in creating your data set is to create the variables. Click on the Variable
View tab on the bottom. Next you will type in your variable names. 2. The first column is where we will name our variables ('Variable Name'). Be sure the
variable names match (Respond, Exer1, Exer2, Exer3, and Exer4). 3. The second column ('Type') lets SPSS know the format of the variable (e.g., number or
string of text). Only Exer4 is a string variable, the others should be numeric. Because RESPOND may start with a 0, this variable should be Restricted Numeric.
4. The 'Label' column allows us to provide a longer description of the variable. Be sure to enter the exact questions in the label column (e.g., What are the last four digits of your phone number?).
5. The 'Value Labels' column tells SPSS what certain values mean. This is used only when you have a nominal or categorical variable. Click on the values in the appropriate row to add category specification (e.g., 0 = No, 1 = Yes). Please be sure to “add” each category before pressing OK.
6. The 'Measure' column describes the scale of measurement for the variable. Here is where you specify whether the variable is continuous (SPSS calls this “scale”), nominal, or ordinal.
7. As the numeric variables are using whole numbers, you can change decimals to 0. The default width of 8 works for all variables except EXER4, which should be changed to a width of 20 to allow for longer responses (e.g., gymnastics).
8. Save the file (Under “File” select “Save As” to specify the file name and where you would like to save the file). Save the data with your name (e.g., Smith_exercise.sav). Be sure to save it to a location you have access to.
Entering Data – Data View 1. Click on the ‘Data view’ tab on the bottom and now you will see your variable names at
the top of the columns in your spreadsheet. You can now enter your responses to the 5 questions. You should have 5 rows of data.
2. After you enter your data, “save” your file again to be sure you keep all the changes!
- Preparing a Data File in SPSS
- Setting Up Your Data File – Variable View
- Entering Data – Data View
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