Memo: Chapter 14

Quantitative Data Analysis
-involves the techniques by which researchers convert data to a numerical form and subject it to statistical analysis.

Quantification of Data
-data can be easily quantified. Ex: male and female into "1" and "2"
Method - researchers must engage in coding process after the data have been collected.
Why?to reduce a wide variety of idiosyncratic items of information to a more limited set of attributes composing a variable.
Guideline - if the data are coded to maintain a great deal of detail, code categories can always be combined during an analysis that does not require such detail

What is coding? and how do you develop them?
Coding - the process whereby raw data are transformed into standardised form suitable for machine processing and analysis
Development: 2 steps
1) begin with a relatively welldeveloped coding scheme
2) generate codes from your data

Now what do I do with all this coding?
Codebook Construction
codebook - a document that describes the location of variables and lists the assignments of codes to the attributes composing those variables.
serves 2 functions
1) the identifiers assigned to different variables
2) the codes assigned to the attributes of those variables.

How do I analyze these data?

Univariate Analysis
-the analysis of a single variable, because it does not involve the relationships between two or more variables
PURPOSE: descriptive rather than explanatory.
TECHNIQUES: frequency distributions, averages, grouped data, and measures of dispersion

Subgroup Comparisons
-used to describe similarities and differences among subgroups with respect to some variable.

Bivariate Analysis
-focuses on relationships between variables rather than on comparisons of groups.
-explores the statistical association between the independent variable and the dependent variable.
PURPOSE: usually explanatory rather than merely descriptive.
TECHNIQUES: contingency tables - constructed to reveal the effects of the independent variable on the dependent variable.

Multivariate Analysis
-a method of analyzing the simultaneous relationships among several variables.
-used to understand the relationship between two variables more fully.
Sociological diagnostics - a quantitative analysis technique for determining the nature of social problems such as ethnic or gender discrimination.