ABSTRACT
Descriptive statistics are used to describe the characteristics of sample in the Method section of report, check variables for any violation of the assumptions underlying the statistical techniques that the students use to address their research questions and address specific research questions. These descriptive statistics include the mean, standard deviation, range of scores, skewness and kurtosis. In IBM SPSS Statistics there are several ways to obtain descriptive statistics. To obtain descriptive statistics for categorical variables, the students should use Frequencies. This will specify how many people gave each response. It doesn't make any sense asking for means, standard deviations and so on for categorical variables, such as sex or marital status. Descriptives also provides some information concerning the distribution of scores on continuous variables. This information may be needed if these variables are to be used in parametric statistical techniques.
