Download Understanding Psychology Statistics: Populations, Samples, & Descriptive/Inferential Stats and more Exams Statistics in PDF only on Docsity! Intro to Psychology Statistics Chapter 1 What are statistics used for? - Used to organize and summarize the information so that the researcher can see what happened in the research study and can communicate the results to others. Statistics helps researcher by... - Answering the questions that initiated the research by determining exactly what general conclusions are justified based on the specific results that were obtained. Statistics - Refers to a set of mathematical procedures for organizing, summarizing, and interpreting information. Population - Is the entire set of the individuals of interest for a particular research question. Sample - A set of individuals selected from a population, usually intended to represent the population in a research study. Variable - A characteristic or condition that changes or has different values for different individuals. Data - A measurement or observation data set - A collection of measurements or observations datum - A single measurement or observation and its commonly called a score or raw score Parameter - a value, usually a numerical value, that describes a population. usually derived from measurements of the individuals in the population. Statistic - a value, usually a numerical value, that describes a sample. a statistic is usually derived from measurements of the individuals in the sample. Descriptive statistics - consists of a statistical procedures that are used to simplify and summarize data. Inferential statistics - consist of techniques that allows us to study samples and then make generalizations about the populations from which they were selected. sampling error - is the naturally occurring discrepancy, or error, that exists between sample statistics and the corresponding population parameter. Margin of error is... - is the sampling error Is there always a margin or error in statistics? - always some margin of error then sample statistics are used to represent population parameters.
