ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the evaluation of Analysis and Results sections in quantitative research reports. These almost always contain statistics that summarize the data that were collected, such as means, medians, and standard deviations. These types of statistics are known as descriptive statistics. The Results sections of quantitative research reports also usually contain inferential statistics. Statistically significant differences are sometimes very small, especially when researchers are using large samples. When this is the case, it is a good idea for a researcher to point this out. Obviously, a small but statistically significant difference will be interpreted differently from a large and statistically significant difference. Inferential statistics, such as tests of differences between the means, correlation coefficients, regression analyses, etc., allow researchers to infer, or generalize, from the sample statistics to the population.
