DO IT YOURSELF 1: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS (VIDEO)

WEEK 2

Descriptive Statistics

This allow one to summarise data (which is huge amount of numbers essentially), grasp the essential features of data quickly and easily. It often in image form, mean, median, mode, SDs, histograms, e.t.c. Descriptive statistics contains the following procedures:

• Descriptive procedure
• Frequencies procedure
• Explore procedure
• Cross-tabs procedure
• Ratio procedure
• P-P plots procedure
• Q-Q plots procedure

But in this module we would focus on the first two procedures namely:

1.1 The Descriptive Procedure

With Descriptive you can quickly generate summary statistical measures such as mean, standard deviation, variance, maximum and minimum values, range and sum for a given variable.

1.2 Frequencies Procedure

With the Frequencies procedure you can also generate summary statistical measures for a given variable. Frequencies gives frequency distributions for all types of data (nominal, ordinal and interval).

  

SAMPLE QUESTION ONE

Given the following data:

Respondent’s ID number	Province	Gender	Ethnicity	Age	Religion	Mother’s Education
1	Alberta	Male	Caucasian	32	Protestant	16
2	Alberta	Female	Caucasian	37	Catholic	13
3	Alberta	Female	Black	72	Catholic	20
4	Alberta	Female	Caucasian	86	Jewish	12
5	Alberta	Male	Caucasian	30	Protestant	5
6	Alberta	Male	Caucasian	32	Catholic	10
7	Alberta	Female	Black	29	Protestant	18
8	Alberta	Male	Black	29	Protestant	4
9	Alberta	Female	Black	53	Protestant	6
10	Alberta	Male	Black	68	Protestant	9
11	Alberta	Female	Caucasian	19	Catholic	2
12	Alberta	Female	Black	43	Catholic	14
13	British Columbia	Female	Black	38	None	12
14	British Columbia	Male	Caucasian	45	Catholic	17
15	British Columbia	Male	Black	24	None	1
16	British Columbia	Male	Caucasian	53	Catholic	3
17	British Columbia	Female	Caucasian	20	Catholic	7
18	British Columbia	Male	Caucasian	27	Catholic	11
19	British Columbia	Male	Caucasian	54	Catholic	8
20	British Columbia	Female	Black	25	Protestant	15
21	British Columbia	Male	Black	20	Catholic	1
22	British Columbia	Female	Black	38	Catholic	7
23	British Columbia	Male	Caucasian	20	Catholic	5
24	British Columbia	Female	Black	34	Catholic	10
25	British Columbia	Female	Caucasian	67	Protestant	19

Run frequencies for the following categorical (i.e., discrete) variables: Gender, Ethnicity, Religion, and Province.  Answer the following questions:

What percentage of the sample is female?  

What percentage of the sample is Black?     

What percentage of the sample is Catholic? 

What percentage of the sample is from Alberta?

After running descriptive procedures

Fill in the box:

Variable	Mean	Standard Deviation	Lowest Value	Highest Value	Range
Age
Mother’s Education (in years)

SOLUTION

STEP 1: let us make the following representations:

 PROVINCE

          1        Alberta

          2        British Columbia

GENDER

          1        male

          2        female

ETHNICITY

          1        Caucasian

          2        Black

RELIGION

          1        Protestant

          2        Catholic

          3        Jewish

          4        None

          5        Other

STEP 2: Enter the variable into the variable view as shown in fig.1

                                                              Fig.1

STEP 3: Enter the value into the Data Editor as shown in Fig. 2 and save it as sample 1

                        Fig. 2

STEP 4: click Analyze - Descriptive Statistics – Frequencies, fig. 3 will be display Click on the selected variable in the left box and transfer it to the Variable(s) box by clicking the arrow as shown in fig. 4. Note: You can transfer more than one variable to the Variable(s) box and run frequencies for all variables at the same time.

 Fig. 3

Fig. 4

STEP 5: In the same window click on Statistics as shown in fig. 5 Select minimum, maximum, and range (they may already be selected as default) Continue. In the same window click on Charts… Bar chart a (You can also try a histogram with or without the normal curve, and a pie chart as shown in fig. 6. However, SPSS will only allow you to select on 1 chart at a time!) Continue OK. Then the output will be display as shown in fig. 7

 Fig. 5

 Fig. 6

Fig. 7

STEP 6: To run descriptive for each variable, Analyze - Descriptive Statistics - Descriptive

Click on the selected variable in the left box and transfer it to the Variable(s) box by clicking the arrow. You can transfer more than one variable to the Variable(s) box and run descriptive for all variables at the same time. In the same window click on Options Select mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum and range (some may already be selected as default) Continue OK.

Attached is a video of the solution to the sample question 1. Enjoy the first video released by abataysoftwarewizard. watch out for more video this is just for test running. Feel free to ask questions.