Imagine that you have collected data from 100 patients. You have
carefully compiled vitals, pain scores, and medications for each of the
patients. However, what does all of this data mean? Is your work now
done?
How do we make data meaningful? Why must we move beyond the raw data to ensure that data is purposeful? Descriptive
analysis is the analysis of the data to develop meaning. Descriptive
analysis provides meaning through showing, describing, and summarizing
the data compiled to “reveal characteristics of the sample and to
describe study variables” (Gray & Grove, 2020). This allows the
researcher to present data in a more meaningful and simplified way.
For this Assignment, summarize your interpretation of the descriptive
statistics provided to you in the Week 4 Descriptive Statistics SPSS
Output document. You will evaluate each variable in your analysis.
To Prepare:
Review the Week 4 Descriptive Statistics SPSS Output provided in this week’s Learning Resources.
Review the Learning Resources on how to interpret descriptive statistics, including how to interpret research outcomes.
Consider the results presented in the SPSS output and reflect on how
you might interpret the frequency distributions and the descriptive
statistics presented.
The Assignment: (2–3 pages)
Summarize your interpretation of the frequency data provided in the
output for respondent’s age, highest school grade completed, and family
income from prior month.
Note: A frequency analysis is way of summarizing data
by depicting the number of times a data value occurs in the data table
or output. It is used to analyze the data set including where the data
are concentrated or clustered, the range of values, observation of
extreme values, and to determine intervals for analysis that could make
sense in categorizing your variable values.
Summarize your interpretation of the descriptive statistics provided
in the output for respondent’s age, highest school grade completed,
race and ethnicity, currently employed, and family income from prior
month.
Note: The descriptive analysis includes N (size of your
sample), the mean, the median, the standard deviation, the size and
spread of your data to determine the variability/variance in your data.
Reminder: The College of Nursing requires that all
papers submitted include a title page, introduction, summary, and
references. The Sample Paper provided at the Walden Writing Center
provides an example of those required elements (available at https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/templates/general#s-lg-box-20293632
Links to an external site.). All papers submitted must use this formatting.