A typical quantitative research project in psychology involves many respondents/participants who are measured on many variables. When we are dealing with a large set of scores, it is useful to present them in an organized manner. We want our research report readers to appreciate our data without going through each participant's responses.
We may present a summary of our data through a frequency distribution table.
The stem-and-leaf display is interesting. While some authors classify it as a table others consider as a graph because of its resemblance to a bar graph. Click here to create one using a java applet.
Sometimes a pictorial or graphical summary would be more effective in communicating with our reader.
Did you encounter the box plot or box-and-whiskers plot? This is another type of graph. Click here to read about it. Here's another discussion on this topic.
Create your own graphs online:
You would have realized by now that graphs can be very informative when it comes to certain characteristics of our data set. We can readily tell if we have an almost symmetic distribution like the normal distribution or if we have a skewed distribution. Outliers (or atypical responses/scores) may also be easily spotted in a graph than in a table.
Create frequency distribution tables and graphs using SPSS
Create frequency distribution tables or graphs using MS-Excel.
Below is a PPt presentation from the publishers of our book:
Click HERE (password protected) if you wish to view the downloadable handouts with notes.
Review the lesson using the the following materials from Wadsworth Cengage:
* crossword puzzle
* flashcard
* tutorial quiz
Take the graded Self Test 02 now.
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