ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a brief excerpt of statistical reporting from a published research article, and begins with guidelines for interpreting the statistics in the excerpt. The questions on the excerpts promote learning by requiring students to: interpret information in tables and figures, perform simple calculations to further their interpretations, critique data-reporting techniques, and evaluate procedures used to collect data. The questions in each exercise are divided into two parts: (1) Factual Questions and (2) Questions for Discussion. The factual questions require careful reading for details, while the discussion questions show that interpreting statistics is more than a mathematical exercise. Recall that a chi-square test is the way to see if there are statistically significant differences in the frequency of a variable across different categories, like gender or political affiliation or age group. A cross-tabulation, or crosstabs, is a helpful way to look at the same kind of data, as it presents information on the relationship between categorical variables.
