Using statistical analysis to learn more about a given population or group of people makes it important to identify the characteristics of the group. Population refers to a group of people who share certain characteristics like college student population which indicates the number of all students in a particular college or university, all individuals who are college students belong to the said student population. When conducting research it is almost impossible to conduct a survey using all the members of a certain population, thus a sample of the population will suffice.
A sample is a representative section of the population that is used as the survey or research respondents. Parameters refer to the numerical value that is used to measure a certain characteristic of the population such as the measures of central tendency or variation. Statistics has several definitions including the analysis, computation and presentation of data from a population or sample; it can also indicate a collection of scores or quantitative values that describes a certain behavior or group. 2. ) Define the concept of sampling error.
Be sure that your definition includes the concepts of statistic and parameter. Sampling error occurs when the identified and used sample population group is not representative of the entire population. This can be caused by not having an accurate statistics of the population that is desired to be studied. Moreover, a sampling error can be committed by using statistics inappropriately and not adhering to standard practices such as not being able to get the minimum of 20% of the total population as the representative sample of the population.
Another cause is when the parameter values are not correctly used such as using the mode or median instead of the mean to measure the central tendency of the group. 3. ) Identify the two elements of an experiment that make this type of research study different from other research methods. The experiment is unique because it has to have two groups and participants are randomly assigned to either the control or experimental group. Then, the independent variable is usually the variable that is manipulated while the dependent variable is the variable or trait that may be affected by the manipulation of the independent variable.
4. ) Define and differentiate between a discrete variable and a continuous variable. A discrete variable is a variable which cannot be assigned any value that is less than its numerical value while a variable which can absorb any value is called continuous variable. An example is when asked to rate from 1 to 5, the data collected will only be either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. Continuous variables move increasingly or decreasingly depending on the condition of the study, thus weight such as 140. 5 pounds is continuous.