Psych Stats 1 Vocab

Front 1

Categorical measurements (variables)

Back 1

Reflect qualitative differences rather than quantitative ones (ex. categories such as yes/no, pass/fail, male/female).

The only requirements are those of mutual exclusivity and exhaustiveness.
There is no necessary sense
in which one category has more or less of a particular quality: they are simply different.

Front 2

mutual exclusivity

Back 2

Each observation (person, case, score) cannot fall into more than one category; one cannot, for example, both pass and fail a test at the same time.

Front 3

exhaustiveness

Back 3

Means that your category system should have enough
categories for all the observations. For biological sex there should be no observations (in this case people) who are neither male nor female.

Front 4

ordinal measurement

Back 4

(the assumptions of mutual exclusivity and exhaustiveness apply)

The categories
themselves can be rank-ordered with reference to some external criterion such
that being in one category can be regarded as having more or less of some underlying quality than being in another category. The rankings reflect more or less of something but not
how much more or less (ex. excellent, fair, poor).
*The fundamental unit of
measurement is not known.

Front 5

Examples of ordinal measurements

Back 5

Attitudes, intentions, opinions, personality
characteristics, psychological well-being, depression, etc.

Front 6

interval level measures

Back 6

Numerically equal distances on the scale reflect equal
differences in the underlying dimension (IQ scores use interval level measures).

Front 7

Ratio scale
measurement

Back 7

Implies
the existence of a potential absolute zero value (ex. length, time and number of correct answers on a test).

Front 8

discrete variables

Back 8

Measures that can have only discrete, whole number values.

Front 9

continuous variables

Back 9

Variables such as height and time, can be divided into ever smaller units of measure, can also be divided up into an infinite number of fractional parts.

Front 10

approximate value

Back 10

A single figure recorded when measuring a continuous variable.

Front 11

descriptive statistics

Back 11

describes large amounts of data (ex. body weight)

Front 12

inferential statistics

Back 12

makes intelligent guess about populations (using sample data)

Front 13

sample

Back 13

a set of observations drawn from a population of interest

Front 14

population

Back 14

all possible observations about which we'd like to know something

Front 15

variables

Back 15

observations of physical, attitudinal, and behavior characteristics that can take on different values