Introduction to Statistics & Descriptive Statistics

Research Methods & Stats Week 2

What is quantitative data?

• Quantitative data explains phenomena by collecting numerical data analysed using mathematical methods (statistics)

• It investigates quantifiable information

• Methodologies: Surveys, tasks (e.g. response time tasks), experiments

What is qualitative data?

• Qualitative data is primarily exploratory

• It helps us gain understanding of underlying reasons (e.g. opinions & motives)

• Methodologies: Interviews, focus groups

How do statistics help us with typical research scenarios?

• When conducting research, we want to be able to generalise the findings to the target population, but it is impractical to test an entire population

• So, we instead take a small sample from this population of which matches the general characteristics of the population, thus making it representative

• e.g. if a population is 50% male and 50% female, then the sample will also be 50% male & 50% female

How are inferential statistics useful?

• Statistics help us use the sample data to make inferences about the population

• Help us reach conclusions beyond our data

• Needs to make assumptions about the representativeness of the sample

How are descriptive statistics useful?

• Describes the data in our sample

• However they only tell us about our sample & not necessarily the population

What is

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