Clauzy Posted July 17, 2012 Report Share Posted July 17, 2012 i have a ordinal data but i dont know the appropriate measures of central tendency and dispersion to use.meanmodemediani dont know which one to chose. Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
blindpet Posted July 17, 2012 Report Share Posted July 17, 2012 Mean is appropriate for interval and ratio data. Median is for ordinal data but traditionally people report the mean for ordinal data as well. Mode is for nominal data so don't use that . Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaydon Posted July 17, 2012 Report Share Posted July 17, 2012 Personally for ordinal data I'd use the median, it's quite robust to outliers. If you don't have outliers however, I'd recommend using your mean. That way you can discuss whether the mean is higher or lower than the median and by how much, so can discuss the dispersion of the data towards the upper or lower end. (for example, the mean was higher than the median meaning that there were more results clustered towards the higher end of the distribution) 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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