Types of Data

Qualitative

usually given in words rather than numbers to describe something

e.g. colour of a car

Quantative

uses numbers which count or measure something

e.g. number of pets someone has

Discrete data

quantitative (needs to be counted) can only take specific values from a set of usually finite values

e.g. number of times coin is flipped until tails is obtained

continuous data

• Quantitative data that needs to be measured

• can take any value within a range of infinite values e.g height of a person

primary data

collected by the person carrying out the research, could be through questionnaires, surveys or experiments

secondary data

• data that has been collected previously by someone else and has been processed to make it easier to use

• data may have been sorted into categories or groups and could be found on the internet or other research sources