Exam 2 Flashcards
Quantitative data analysis, community-based research, survey research (46 cards)
What is descriptive research?
characterizing the sample or data
- average age of students in the class, highest/lowest marks
What is inferential research?
trying to reach conclusions that extend beyond the immediate data alone
- make judgements of the probability that an observed difference between grips is a dependable one
- used when you can’t measure everyone or everything
What are the 3 scales of measurement?
Nominal, ordinal, continuous
What is a nominal scale?
unordered data, no ranking
- can’t calculate a mean
- ex. sex, favourite colour, breed of dog
What is an ordinal scale?
predetermined order among response classification
- can’t take an average
- ex. education level, placing in race
what is a continuous scale of measurement? (interval/ratio)
most precise, can get a mean
What are statistics?
an objective way of understanding our data
What 2 things do statistics inform us of?
- reliability
-significance (is this due to chance?) and meaningfulness (does this matter in the real world
What is central tendency?
single score that best represents all scores for a group of individuals
- Mean - most common measure of CT
- Median - number occurring at the midpoint of the series
- Mode - most frequently occurring number
What is a normal curve or normal distribution?
Characterized by symmetrical distributing of data about the centre of the curve
- Mean, median and mode all located at middle of curve
- frequency of scores decline in a predictable manner as scores deviate further from the centre of the curve
What is variability?
Measure of spread or dispersion of data
- how spread out the data is
- deviations from the mean
- used to know whether data is closely collected around the mean or not
What is standard deviation?
measure of spread
- how spread out the data is from the mean
- How much variability there is in the data
What is the difference between low standard deviation and high?
Low - data was closely clustered around the mean
High - data is dispersed around a larger range of values
How does standard deviation impact large data sets?
- 68% of data is within 1 SD
- 95% of data is within 2 SD
- 99% of data is within 3 SD
What is skewness?
Describes direction of hump and nature of the tails
- positively skewed - hump to left, tail to right (mean is higher than median and mode)
- negatively skewed - hump to right, tail to left (mean is lower than median and mode)
What is kurtosis?
describes vertical aspect of curve
- used to describe the degree to which scores cluster in the tails or peak of a frequency
- Leptokurtic curve - high kurtosis have distinct peak near mean and decline rapidly, have heavy tails
Platykurtic curve - low kurtosis tend to have flat top near mean
Mesokurtic curve - normal distribution
What is the basis of community engaged research? (5)
- not usually done in a lab
- Contributes to academic and community success
- community based organizations have credible, legitimate and intimate understandings of the assets, concerns, values and activities in their community
- Partnership based on both parties having valuable knowledge
- Process of planning a change, acting and observing, reflecting on processes an consequences and re-planning
What is a community?
Group of people linked by social ties who share common perspectives or interests, and may share a common geographical location
- Not homogenous and seldom speak with a single voice
Why do we use community- engaged research? (5)
- Increasing interest in health disparities in diverse communities
- Challenging health and social problems can’t be answered by experts alone
- Disappointing results with introducing evidence based practices in real world
- Increasing community desire for collaboration, not just research on a group
- Increasing funder interests in community-driven versus community-placed research
What are barriers with community-engaged research? (6)
- researchers aren’t connected to community organizations or diverse communities
- community organizations don’t realize they can collaborate with researchers (no cost)
- takes time and money
- researchers need peer reviewed papers for their career
- researchers have to give up some control to community partners
- poor communication and unrealistic expectations can lead to conflicts between academic and community partners
How to combat survey fatigue? (5)
- exhaustive vs. exhausting
- expectations - “Survey will take approx. 10 mins”
- know your audience - invested in topic makes people more likely to finish survey
- open (written answers) vs. closed (on a scale, multiple choice)
- relationship of the respondent or topic
What is important about the wording of surveys?
using grade 10 literacy levels, not using highly technical language, clear, short and easy to understand
How many questions can you ask at once on a survey?
1
How do you order questions on a survey?
Group similar topics assuming it doesn’t cause other issues
- leave questions that may cause offence to be very personal to the end (reduce bias in earlier responses or leaving survey)
- Logic flow (design rules that dictate what questions will come after one another)
