How to Analyze Data Pocket Study Skills 1st edition by Catrin Radcliffe 1137608471 9781137608475

PART 1 GETTING STARTED

1 What does your assignment ask you to do?

2 How will you do it?

Have you been asked to analyze a dataset?

Are you responsible for collecting and analyzing the data?

3 Defining your research question

4 Tips for designing your questionnaire

What do you need your questionnaire to do?

How will you carry out this questionnaire?

Designing your questionnaire

Wording your questionnaire

Common problems: spot the difference?

5 How to enter your data into a spreadsheet

Organizing and entering your data

Tips for entering data

Saving data

PART 2 UNDERSTANDING AND DESCRIBING YOUR DATA

6 What type of data do you have?

7 Descriptive statistics

Population and samples

Calculating averages

For nominal data, report the mode.

Calculating measures of spread

Using Excel functions

8 What plot should you use?

To plot or not to plot?

What type of plot?

Plotting categorical data

Plotting scale data: distributions or relationships

PART III HOW DO STATISTICAL TESTS WORK

9 What is a statistical hypothesis?

10 Using probability distributions in statistical tests

What is probability?

What are degrees of freedom?

What about chance?

Two-tailed test

One-tailed test: What’s different?

11 Statistical errors and their interpretation

Type I error

Type II error

Type III error

Interpreting statistical results

PART 4 WHAT STATISTICAL TEST DO YOU NEED?

12 The statistical signpost

13 Statistical flowcharts

Categorical tests

Parametric tests

Nonparametric tests

14 Case studies

Case study 1: Describing data and looking for an association between variables

Case study 2: Looking for a difference between variables

Case study 3: Looking for a relationship between variables

PART 5 THE STATISTICAL PROCESS

15 You the researcher

What is your research question?

Your data

Describing your data

Reporting your results

What to include?

p-values

Use your reading

And finally …

16 You the interpreter

Interpreting published results: the outline

You’ve reached the finish line!

Symbols explained

References

Useful resources

Index