Unit 3 Flashcards
(128 cards)
What are the 3 attributes of study variables?
Order / Magnitude
Consistency of scale / equal distances
Rational absolute zero
What are the 3 levels of data measurement?
Nominal
Ordinal
Interval/ Ratio
Nominal
Dichotomous/ Binary
Non-ranked (non-ordered)
Named categories
- categorical data - can be more than 2 categories - ex: 2 genders, 2 age groups
No order/ magnitude
No consistency of scale or equal distances
Nominal variables are simply labeled- variables without quantitative characteristics
Examples of Nominal variables
What is your gender?
- Male or Female
What is your hair color?
- brown vs black vs blonde vs grey vs other
Education level (if made binary)
Smoking vs non-smoking
Ordinal
Ordered and order-able
Rank-able categories
Non-equal distance between ranges
- technically can be equal and unequal
Unitless
Yes order/ magnitude
No consistency of scale or equal distances
- No units or scales - No even spacing between them
Data is collected in categories and can be ordered
Examples of Ordinal variables
Pain Scales
- patient decides what each value means
Strongly agree > somewhat agree > Neither > somewhat disagree > strongly disagree
SES
- unitless, broken into categories
Interval/ Ratio
Order/ magnitude
Equal Distances
- unitless
- equal spaces between scales
Interval
- Arbitrary 0 value - 0 doesn't mean absence - Can be 0 or negative values
Ratio
- Absolute 0 value - 0 means absence of measurement value - No negative values - Ex: physiological parameters - blood pressure - blood sugar
Examples of Interval/ Ratio variables
Living siblings and personal age
Height in cm
Speed in m/s
LDL in mg/ dL
Mean
Average value
Median
Middle value
Mode
Most common value
This is the most useful measurement for descriptive statistics
What is descriptive statistics?
Tells us about our population
Describes our population
Range
Maximum - minimum
Interquartile Range
Top 25% = Q3
Bottom 25% = Q1
Middle 50% = Q3 - Q1
- represented the 25% above and below the mean
Variance
The average of the squared differences in each individual measurement value and the groups mean
Describes the spread of data
Variance from the mean
Standard Deviation
Square root of variance
Restores units of mean
Describes spread of data
Normal Distribution
Symmetrical
Mean and median are (almost) equal
Equal dispersion of curve (tails) to both sides of mean
Statistical tests useful for normal- distributed data are known as _____
Parametric Tests
Required assumptions of interval/ ratio data for proper selection of parametric tests
- Normal distribution
- Equal variances
- use Levene’s Test
- Randomly derived and independent
Levene’s Test
Test used to calculate if data is normally distributed and has equal variance
Used to assess if the variances are different between groups
Null Hypothesis: groups are equal
Tries to show that there is a difference between groups
How to handle interval data that is not normally distributed
- Use a statistical test that does not require the data to be normally distributed
- non-parametric tests
- step down and run ordinal test
- Transform data to a standardized value
- hope that the transformation allows data to be normally distributed
- z score or log transformation
Positively Skewed
Asymmetric distribution with one tail longer than the other
Mean > median
- mean is higher than median
Tail points to the right
Negatively Skewed
Asymmetric distribution with one tail longer than the other
Mean < median
- mean is lower than medium
Tail points to the left
What effect do outliers have on skewness?
Outliers pull the tails out farther
Contributes to skewness