ABSTRACT
This chapter shows when to use the mean, median, mode, and standard deviation. It presents the concept of the normal curve and z-scores and the concepts of probability and statistical significance. The chapter discusses the steps in describing the data and introduces some basic theoretical concepts about the normal curve and significance level. There are several ways of presenting univariate information about the variables in the study, including frequency distributions, graphs, and statistical measures. A frequency table or distribution shows how often each response (a value) was given by the respondents to each item (a variable). Frequency tables are especially useful when a variable has a limited number of values, such as with nominal or ordinal measures. If data are continuous or interval/ratio measures, histograms and frequency curves are better ways of visually presenting univariate information. Histograms are similar to bar charts, but the bars are adjacent and touching each other to indicate the continuous nature of the measure.
