When reporting findings from a quantitative research study, a researcher will present some descriptive statistics. What are descriptive statistics? Below is a definition of descriptive statistics:
Descriptive Statistics Definition:
Descriptive statistics are statistics that summarize data from research.
Descriptive Statistics Examples:
There a a few ways to summarize research data. First, one can calculate measures of central tendency. These include the mean, the median, and the mode.
Second, one can summarize the data with respect to the variance in the data. The variance is a descriptive statistic that reflects the degree of dispersion of the scores. There is greater variance when scores are more spread out from the mean.