The first step to using summary statistics is by understanding the type of data being dealt with. The fundamental difference between categorical and continuous level data is that quantitative variables prompt the question, how much? Whereas categorical variables prompt the question, what type? Hasted (2018) researched that quantitative variables can be discrete or continuous. Continuous variables can take any value with a given range, for example, Categorical variable X2SEX, which is the T2 Student’s sex. Categorical variables, meanwhile, are ordinal or nominal to mean that they can be ordered or non-ordered, respectively. S1HRVIDEO is an example of a continuous variable: the hours spent playing video games in a typical school. Therefore, it is usually easy to summarize categorical variables, and analysts usually convert quantitative variables to categorical to facilitate descriptive analysis.
The descriptive statistics table above compares two variables and explains three crucial results central to descriptive analysis. The three parameters, sample size, data spread, and center of data, are observable from the table. First, valid N represents the number of observations in the sample, and the number is 4040. Thus, X2SEX has a value of 4700, while S1HRVIDEO has a value of 4040. Second, the mean describes the center of data and denotes the center of data distribution, so X2SEX has a mean of 1.50, whereas S1HRVIDEO has a mean of 1.82 (Allen, 2017). Third, the standard deviation reflects the spread of data from the mean, and a higher value denotes a larger spread, while a lower value denotes a lesser spread (Kaur et al., 2018). For example, X2SEX has a standard deviation of 0.500 while S1HRVIDEO is 1.419, showing that S1HRVIDEO has a greater spread from the mean than X2SEX.
Results from variable one show that more girls took part in the study than boys. However, the data distribution was small; thus, the results may reflect the female gender and may mislead the final research outcome. Variable two shows that the students spent at least one hour and a maximum of six hours playing video games; hence, the data can shape the students’ social lives. The Mean for X1SES is 0.0355.
References
Allen, M. (2017). Variables, continuous. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods.
Hasted, A. (2018). Statistical analysis of descriptive data. Descriptive Analysis in Sensory Evaluation, 165–210.
Kaur, P., Stoltzfus, J., & Yellapu, V. (2018). Descriptive statistics. International Journal of Academic Medicine, 4(1), 60.