Ch 13: Descriptive Statistics in Psychology: Help and Review
About This Chapter
Who's it for?
Anyone who needs help learning or mastering research methods in psychology material will benefit from taking this course. There is no faster or easier way to learn about psychology research methods. Among those who would benefit are:
- Students who have fallen behind in understanding measures of central tendency, frequency distributions and measures of variability
- Students who struggle with learning disabilities or learning differences, including autism and ADHD
- Students who prefer multiple ways of learning social science (visual or auditory)
- Students who have missed class time and need to catch up
- Students who need an efficient way to learn about descriptive statistics in psychology
- Students who struggle to understand their teachers
- Students who attend schools without extra social science learning resources
How it works:
- Find videos in our course that cover what you need to learn or review.
- Press play and watch the video lesson.
- Refer to the video transcripts to reinforce your learning.
- Test your understanding of each lesson with short quizzes.
- Verify you're ready by completing the Descriptive Statistics in Psychology chapter exam.
Why it works:
- Study Efficiently: Skip what you know, review what you don't.
- Retain What You Learn: Engaging animations and real-life examples make topics easy to grasp.
- Be Ready on Test Day: Use the Descriptive Statistics in Psychology chapter exam to be prepared.
- Get Extra Support: Ask our subject-matter experts any descriptive statistics question. They're here to help!
- Study With Flexibility: Watch videos on any web-ready device.
Students will review:
This chapter helps students review the concepts in a descriptive statistics unit of a standard research methods in psychology course. Topics covered include:
- Uses of descriptive statistics
- Types of frequency distributions
- Mean, median and mode
- Range, variance and standard deviation

1. What Are Descriptive Statistics? - Definition and Uses
There are several types of descriptive statistics for different purposes depending on the information researchers want to obtain. Learn about the definition and uses of some descriptive statistics, including mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, and variance.

2. Frequency Distributions: Definition & Types
A frequency distribution is a list of numerical figures represented in a table diagram or histogram that detail how often each value occurs in a set of data. Learn about definition and types of frequency distributions.

3. Mean, Median & Mode: Measures of Central Tendency
In research, measures of central tendency are descriptive statistics that help researchers understand which data is more representative of a data set. Explore the mean, median, and mode. Understand how each measure is calculated, and learn how researchers use each measure to understand samples, as well as the populations that samples represent.

4. Measures of Variability: Range, Variance & Standard Deviation
In research, the variability of a data set helps researchers understand how much the data spreads out around the data set's midpoint, and it also helps researchers compare different sets of data. Explore measures of variability, including range, variance, and standard deviation. Learn how to use the formulas to calculate each measure, and review the definitions of research terms such as population, sample, and parameter.
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Other Chapters
Other chapters within the Research Methods in Psychology: Help and Review course
- Introduction to Research Methods: Help and Review
- Principles of Ethical Research: Help and Review
- Setting Up the Research Study: Help and Review
- Data Collection Techniques in Psychology: Help and Review
- Nonexperimental Research: Help and Review
- Qualitative Research Methods and Design: Help and Review
- Quasi-Experimental Research: Help and Review
- Sampling and Generalization: Help and Review
- Measurement in Research: Help and Review
- Internal Validity in Research: Help and Review
- External Validity: Help and Review
- Experimental Design: Help and Review
- Inferential Statistics in Psychology: Help and Review
- Evaluating Research Findings: Help and Review
- Ethics in Counselor-Supervisor Relationships