Central Tendency and Variability

Required Readings

Frankfort-Nachmias, C., Leon-Guerrero, A., & Davis, G. (2020). Social statistics for a diverse society (9th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

• Chapter 3, “Measures of Central Tendency” (pp. 75-111)
• Chapter 4, “Measures of Variability” (pp. 113-150)

Wagner, III, W. E. (2020). Using IBM® SPSS® statistics for research methods and social science statistics (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

• Chapter 4, “Organization and Presentation of Information”
• Chapter 11, “Editing Output”

Wheelan, C. (2013). Naked statistics: Stripping the dread from data. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

By Day 3

Post, present, and report a descriptive analysis for your variables, specifically noting the following UNDER EACH HEADING

For your continuous variable:

1. Report the mean, median, and mode.
2. What might be the better measure for central tendency? (i.e., mean, median, or mode) and why?
3. Report the standard deviation.
4. How variable are the data?
5. How would you describe this data?
6. What sort of research question would this variable help answer that might inform social change?

Post the following information for your categorical variable:

1. A frequency distribution.
2. An appropriate measure of variation.
3. How variable are the data?
4. How would you describe this data?
5. What sort of research question would this variable help answer that might inform social change?

Be sure to support your Main Post and Response Post with reference to the week’s Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA 7 Writing Style.

By Day 5

Respond to at least one colleagues’ post with a comment on the presentation and interpretation of their analysis. In your response, address the following questions: ADDRESS UNDER EACH HEADING

1. Was the presentation of results clear? If so, provide some specific comments on why. If not, provide constructive suggestions.
2. Are you able to understand how the results might relate back to positive social change?
3. Do you think there are other aspects of positive social change related to the results?

Thanks much!