ABSTRACT
Introduction Chapter 3 covered the elements of analyzing data using a tabular and graphical approach. These were visual illustrations of data. This chapter takes a different approach and begins the investigaK tion of quantitative data analysis using measures called descriptive statistics. Descriptive statisK tics are techniques that describe or summarize large amounts of data in some abbreviated form. In the social sciences, this typically entails measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion. Measures o f central tendency are used to describe the middle or center of a data set. The general idea is that a researcher would look for a common measure that best describes or represents the characteristics of the entire group. The two most commonly used measures of central tendency are the mean and median. Measures o f dispersion provides information that describes individual differences. In other words, how spread is the data around the mean or how much do the indiK vidual observations in a set of data vary from one another? The standard deviation is usually considered the most important measure of dispersion.
