Spring 2014

Measurement

Scales Quantitative data analysis

 Scale:

tool that consists of statements or questions with a set of response categories to measure variables.

A nominal scale is one that allows the researcher to assign subjects to certain categories or groups.
What is your department? O Marketing O Maintenance O Production O Servicing O Sales O Public Relations What is your gender? O Male O Female

O Finance O Personnel O Accounting

Ordinal scale: not only categorizes variables in such a way as to denote differences among various categories, it also rank-orders categories in some meaningful way. What is the highest level of education you have completed? O Less than High School O High School/GED Equivalent O College Degree O Masters Degree O Doctoral Degree

 Interval

scale: whereas the nominal scale allows us only to qualitatively distinguish groups by categorizing them into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive sets, and the ordinal scale to rank-order the preferences, the interval scale lets us measure the distance between any two points on the scale.

Circle the number that represents your feelings at this particular moment best. There are no right or wrong answers. Please answer every question.

1. I invest more in my work than I get out of it

I disagree completely

I agree completely

2. I exert myself too much considering what I get back in return

I disagree completely

I agree completely

3. For the efforts I put into the organization, I get much in return

I disagree completely

3
9

I agree completely

10

 Ratio

scale: overcomes the disadvantage of the arbitrary origin point of the interval scale, in that it has an absolute (in contrast to an arbitrary) zero point, which is a meaningful measurement point.
is your age?

What

11

12

13

 Data

coding: assigning a number to the participants responses so they can be entered into a database.
Entry: after responses have been coded, they can be entered into a database. Raw data can be entered through any software program (e.g., SPSS)

Data

2a. Do you belong to a club with tennis facilities?

Yes . . . . . . . No . . . . . . .

-1 -2

b. How many people in your household - including yourself - play tennis? Number who play tennis ___________ 3a. Why do you play tennis? (Please X all that apply.) To have fun . . . . . . . . . . To stay fit. . . . . . . . . . . . To be with friends. . . . . . To improve my game . . . To compete. . . . . . . . . . . To win. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6

b. In the past 12 months, have you purchased any tennis instructional books or video tapes? Yes . . . . . . . -1 No . . . . . . . -2

Once data is collected, researcher will have to summarize and organize this data so that it gets meaningful and easier to understand. Three ways to do this is through:
Frequency distribution Cross tabulation Graphs

Simplest form of descriptive analysis.

 Frequency

distribution is a table in which all of the scores/categories are listed along with the frequency/count with which each occurs.

Exam score for 10 students (56, 69, 78, 80, 47, 85, 82, 56, 75, 95)
Score 47 56 69 75 78 80 82 Frequency 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 Relative Frequency 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1

85
95

1
1 N=10

0.1
0.1 1.00

E.g. speed scores range from 45 and 95 and we want to divide this over 5 intervals, then the width of each interval will be (95-45)/5 = 10
Class interval 45 54 55 64 65 74 75 84 85 - 94 95 or more 1 2 1 2 3 1 N = 10 Frequency Relative Frequency 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.1 1.00

technique for organizing data by groups, categories, or classes, thus facilitating comparisons; a joint frequency distribution of observations on two or more sets of variables Cross-tabulation of question: Do you shop at HKB? w.r.t Gender
YES MEN WOMEN 150 180 330 NO 75 45 120 TOTAL 225 225 450

 Analyze

data by groups or categories Compare differences Percentage cross-tabulations

YES

NO

Total (BASE)

MEN WOMEN

66.7% 80%

33.3% 20%

100% (225) 100% (225)

 Pictorial
Choice

representation of data.

on the type of pictorial representation depends on the type of data collected and what researcher intend to illustrate. graphs are

Common

Bar Graphs Histograms Pie charts Line graphs

graphical representation of a frequency distribution/percentages in which vertical bars are centered above each category and are separated from each other by a space. for nominal data.

Suitable Types

of Bar graphs

Simple bar graph Multiple bar graph Component bar graph/stacked bar graph

Student Modes of Transport 25 20

Frequency

15 Number of Students 10 5 0 Walking Biking Motor Bike Mode Car Bus

 Example:

sales of a retail by department are shown in the following table

 Used:

When a category is divided into subcategories and researcher is interested to note changes in the sub-categories rather than the totals

 Used:

When research is interested in comparing and seeing how the totals are made up

graphical representation of a frequency distribution/percentages in which vertical bars centered above scores on the x-axis touch each other to indicate that the scores on the variable represent related, increasing values. for data collected on ordinal, interval or ratio scale.

Appropriate

IQ Score data for 21 students

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 6 4 3 2 1 1 1 0 83 86 89 91 95 0 98 101 104 105 2 1

Frequency

IQ Score

 Line

graph of the individual scores.

Once

all the scores are plotted, the data points are connected. for ratio data.

Appropriate

14 12 CO2 emissions 10 8 6 4 2 0

1999

2000

2001

2002 2003 year

2004

2005

2006

circle with sectors marked with areas representing the proportion of units in each of a set of given categories.
for nominal, ordinal data interval data. or

Appropriate

Student Modes of Transport

walking, 1 Bus, 9 Biking, 5 walking Biking Motor Bike Car Bus

Car, 11

Motor Bike, 20

 Indicates

where the scores centre in the distribution (measures the middleness of a distribution).
measures of central tendency are:

Three

Mean Median Mode

 Most

common measure of central tendency.

Calculated

by adding up all the values of a variable and divide by total number of values. is also called arithmetic average.

It

Appropriate for interval and ratio data.

 If

all the data is ranked from highest to lowest, the value of the middle case is the median. there are an odd number of cases, it is the middle number.
there are an even number of cases, the average of two middle scores is calculated to get the median.

If

If

On a distribution graph median is the point on the x-axis at which half the cases fall above and below.
In distributions with one or few extreme values (either high or low), mean will not be a good indicator of central tendency. In such cases, a better measure of central tendency is the median

The score in a distribution that occurs with the greatest frequency.

In a distributions, if all scores occur with equal frequency then such a distribution has no mode. In other distributions some scores occur with equal frequency. Such distributions may have two modes (bimodal) or three modes (trimodal), or even more. Mode is the only indicator of central tendency that could be used with nominal data.

A measure of variation provides information about the width or spread of the distribution.
A measure of variation is a number that indicates how scores are dispersed around the mean of the distribution. Three measures of variation are

Range Variance Standard Deviation

Simplest measure of variation.

Range the difference between the lowest and highest score in a distribution.

Range = largest value smallest value

Range provides some information concerning difference in the spread of the distributions.

the

They give a general idea about the homogeneity (low SD) or heterogeneity (high SD) of a distribution.

Distribution A (Exam Scores) 0

50 100 = 150 = 50 Range (100 0) = 100

Distribution B 45
50 55 = 150 = 50

(Exam Score)

Range (55 45) = 10

 Each

score stands at some distance from the mean. This distance is called a deviation or error. degree to which all the scores deviate from the mean is a reflection of the variability of a distribution. for variance

The

Formula

SS N

Distribution A 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 = 14

X- -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

(X-)2 9 4 1 0 1 4 9 = 28 Also known as sum of squares (SS)

Distribution B 5 8 11 14 17 20 23 = 14

X- -9 -6 -3 0 3 6 9

(X-)2 81 36 9 0 9 36 81 = 252 SS = 252

Variance for Distribution A = 28/7 Variance for Distribution B = 252/7 =4 = 36 This shows that distribution B has much more variability then Distribution A.

Variance is not the most useful measure of variation of a distribution when we are interested in the spread of scores. This is because it is a squared value, which looks significantly different to the values used in the distribution.
Variance is not a very useful descriptive statistics however it is used in complex statistical analysis.

Standard deviation is the square root of the variance.